July 11, 2024 — The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has highlighted the need for aquaculture to grow in order to help feed the growing human population to 2050 – but that growth has to be managed sustainably. For the past 25 years, the use of marine ingredients in aquaculture has been a subject of concern. In the 1980s and 1990s, many farmed fish diets were predominantly based on fishmeal and fish oil, both of which are rich sources of nutrients, proteins, vitamins, minerals, and fatty acids. However, as the industry expanded, the demand for these marine resources grew in parallel, raising critical questions about the sustainability of using fish to feed fish, especially when these marine resources could potentially feed people directly.
The solution has been to convert less palatable fish into high-demand products like salmon, seabass, seabream, or shrimp while ensuring that our sourcing practices have minimum impact on marine ecosystems. However, as aquaculture grows further to feed more people, so does the potential demand for fishmeal and fish oil, which is also sought after by other industries. With this increasing competition for a finite resource, how do we identify and develop sustainable alternatives while continuing to use these marine ingredients responsibly?