Saving Seafood

VIDEO: Sustainable Aquaculture Takes Center Stage at International Conference

  • There are no replacements for fish meal and fish oils in aquaculture feeds
  • Fish meal and fish oil are supplied from sustainable marine ingredient fisheries
  • Government labs are studying how to put sustainable supplies to best use
  • Just 5 million tons of fish meal and fish oil help produce 300 million tons of food for humans

WASHINGTON (Saving Seafood) – September 28, 2015 – After decades of growth, the aquaculture industry continues to expand as a crucial segment of the global seafood market, and sustainably harvested fish meal and fish oil are fueling this growth. In a new video produced by Saving Seafood and released in partnership with IFFO, the trade association representing the marine ingredients industry, and Omega Protein, aquaculture industry leaders and experts discuss the future of fish meal, fish oil, and farmed seafood. The video, which premiers today at IFFO’s Annual Conference in Berlin, is also being made available to the public.

 

“People talk about fish meal replacements; there really aren’t fish meal replacements, because no one ingredient is going to have everything that fish meal has,” said Dr. Rick Barrows, a Fish Nutritionist at the USDA’s Agricultural Research Service Fish Technology Center in Bozeman, Montana.

Fish meal and fish oil are irreplaceable because they are some of the best sources of the proteins and essential nutrients that are vital to healthy farmed fish. Some of these nutrients, especially omega-3 fatty acids, are an increasingly important part of human diets as well, having been linked to improved heart health and better brain function.

“You and I, like fish, need 40 essential micronutrients,” says Dr. Michael Rubino, Director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Fisheries Office of Aquaculture. “Forage fish, in the form of fish meal and fish oil happens to be the perfect combination of those micronutrients.”

Marine ingredient fisheries, like the menhaden fishery in the U.S., provide a steady supply of fish meal and fish oil to meet the needs of the aquaculture industry. Dr. Jeffrey Silverstein, the USDA National Program Leader of Aquaculture notes in the new video that these fisheries have “been very sustainable over the last 30 years,” and that the ingredients they provide will continue to be valuable as aquaculture expands.

“Aquaculture growth has been about 8 percent per year for the last 25 years,” says Dr. Silverstein. “Today, about 50 percent of the seafood consumed by humans is coming from aquaculture, and that’s slated to continue growing. So we’re going need to produce more and more seafood through aquaculture.”

With growing global demand for marine ingredients, the aquaculture industry is also looking toward the future, adapting and innovating to make the use of fish meal and oil more efficient. While new formulas and substitute ingredients will become increasingly common, fish meal and fish oil will remain irreplaceable components of aquaculture.

“Aquaculture will, over time, be able to grow, but fish meal will still be at the base of aquaculture, and if you took fish meal away, this would have a very serious effect on the aquaculture industry in the world” says Dr. Andrew Jackson, Technical Director of IFFO. Dr. Jackson was awarded the Seafood Champion Leadership Award the at the 2015 SeaWeb Seafood Summit in New Orleans, Louisiana, in acknowledgement of his work to promote sustainability in the marine ingredient and aquaculture industries.

Dr. Jackson also notes that marine ingredients are an increasingly important component of the global food supply. According to Dr. Jackson, 15 million tons of fish are used annually to produce 5 million tons of fish meal. That 5 million tons goes to feed 35 million tons of aquaculture, and goes into the animal feed that produces around 300 million tons of food. Dr. Jackson sees this as a reasonable tradeoff, “so long as things are being done in a proper, responsible, sustainable way.”

The interviews with industry leaders and experts were conducted at the 2015 Seafood Expo North America in Boston and the 2015 SeaWeb Seafood Summit. Featured in the video are Drs. Silverstein, Rubino, Barrows, and Jackson, as well as Andrew Nagle, a member of the Seafood Sales and Purchasing team at the John Nagle Company, located in Boston, Massachusetts.

Saving Seafood is a Washington D.C.-based non-profit that conducts media and public outreach on behalf of the seafood industry.

IFFO is an international non-profit that represents and promotes the global fish meal, fish oil, and marine ingredients industry. 

Omega Protein Corporation is a century old nutritional company that develops, produces and delivers healthy products throughout the world to improve the nutritional integrity of functional foods, dietary supplements and animal feeds.

View the video, “A Closer Look at Aquaculture and Marine Ingredients,” here

View a PDF of the release here

VIDEO: Aquaculture Abounds this Week with New Video Premiere and U.S. Aquaculture Week

WASHINGTON (Saving Seafood) – September 24, 2015 — Global experts agree: the marine ingredients used to sustain aquaculture are irreplaceable for their nutritive benefits for aquaculture species and the human consumers who eventually enjoy them as food. In conjunction with the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) first-ever Aquaculture Week, Saving Seafood announces a new video showcasing the vital role that marine ingredients play in the expanding, sustainable aquaculture industry. Produced in partnership with the International Fish Meal and Fish Oil Organisation (IFFO) and Omega Protein, the video features interviews with aquaculture industry leaders and experts from both sides of the Atlantic.

“People talk about fish meal replacements; there really aren’t fish meal replacements, because no one ingredient is going to have everything that fish meal has,” explains Dr. Rick Barrows in the video. Dr. Barrows is a Fish Nutritionist at the USDA’s Agricultural Research Service Fish Technology Center in Bozeman, Montana. Dr. Barrows, alongside Dr. Andrew Jackson, Technical Director of IFFO and recent recipient of the Seafood Champion Leadership Award at the 2015 SeaWeb Seafood Summit in New Orleans, Louisiana, join a handful of other global aquaculture experts in the new video.

This week, NOAA is “celebrating the important role of aquaculture in providing a sustainable seafood supply, building economic opportunities and resilience in coastal communities, and conserving our natural resources,” just days ahead of IFFO’s Annual Conference in Berlin, where attendees will view the premiere screening of “A Closer Look at Aquaculture and Marine Ingredients.” With today’s announcement, Saving Seafood includes a 30 second preview of the new video, and will release the full-length video to coincide with its showing at IFFO’s Annual Conference.

Saving Seafood is a Washington D.C.-based non-profit that conducts media and public outreach on behalf of the seafood industry.

IFFO, the International Fish Meal and Fish Oil Organisation, is an international non-profit that represents and promotes the global fish meal, fish oil, and marine ingredients industry.

Omega Protein Corporation is a century old nutritional company that develops, produces and delivers healthy products throughout the world to improve the nutritional integrity of functional foods, dietary supplements and animal feeds.

Watch a preview of the new video here  

GAA to Launch Advocate Website on Oct 1; Will Terminate Print Publication at Year’s End

SEAFOODNEWS.COM — September 16, 2015 — On October 1 the Global Aquaculture Alliance (GAA) will launch a revamped website for its longstanding bimonthly print publication The Advocate. 

The website advocate.gaalliance.org will feature a variety of production, supply and market-related news for the aquaculture industry. The GAA will also terminate the printed version of The Advocate with the November-December 2015 edition serving as the last magazine to be published. 

“The new Advocate website will blend the best of the 17-year-old bimonthly print publication with the timeliness, convenience and interactivity of a digital publication,” the GAA said in a press release.

Content will be updated weekly and accompanied by a weekly e-newsletter and a monthly, summary-style e-newsletter. The website will feature the production-centric content traditionally found in the print publication, in addition to supply- and market-related content. The site will also feature a variety of visuals — infographics, charts and graphs and videos — giving readers a more interactive experience.

Additionally, Advocate content will be categorized by theme, allowing readers to customize content by relevance. The seven categories are: animal health and welfare, environmental and social responsibility, feed sustainability, investment, marketplace, leadership and innovation, and consumer education.

Longtime Advocate Editor Dr. Darryl Jory will continue to regularly contribute to the publication as editor emeritus. James Wright, who was hired by GAA in early July, will oversee the day-to-day operation of the new Advocate website as editorial manager. The site — which is being developed by Visible Logic Inc. of Portland, Maine, USA, the same company that built the new GAA and Best Aquaculture Practices sites — is due to launch on Oct. 1.

The new Advocate website will be free to access, though readers will be limited to five articles per month; GAA membership will be required for unlimited access. Select articles will be translated from English to Spanish, Chinese and other languages. The transition from print to digital is in line with GAA’s mission of advocating, educating and demonstrating responsible aquaculture practices to feed and employ future generations.

The website arrives just in time for the GAA’s GOAL 2015 Conference in Vancouver, Canada. Over 400 aquaculture executives are expected to attend this year’s event, which will be held from October 25 – 30 at the Four Seasons in Vancouver. 

This story originally appeared on SEAFOODNEWS.COM, a subscription site. It is reprinted with permission.

 

Access Granted to Chile’s Salmon Farming Antibiotic Use Info

CHILE — September 14, 2015 — Oceana has been granted access to information on Chile’s salmon farming antibiotic use between 2009 and 2013, following a unanimous ruling by Santiago’s Court of Appeals.

“We are pleased to hear the reversal of an incorrect ruling by the Transparency Council. Clearly, this is public information as it allows people to make decisions on fundamental issues, such as health and the environment, in addition to making scrutiny on whether the Government is effectively controlling this industry or not,” stated Alex Muñoz, Vice President for Oceana in Chile.

In July 2014, Oceana resorted to the Transparency Council after 50 salmon farms refused to reveal the amount and type of antibiotics used by them, on the grounds that this would entail “a competitive and commercial risk.”

The Transparency Council agreed with the salmon farms and declared that the National Fishery Service is not required to reveal disaggregated figures.

Read the full story from The Fish Site

Economic pressures on fishing

September 9, 2015 — Stocks of wild fish cannot be protected from overfishing in the long term by the expansion of aquaculture alone. Economic driving forces such as increasing global demand for fish or improved fishing methods will lead in future to increased fishery pressure on the most popular types of edible fish. Ocean researchers from Kiel and Finland come to this conclusion in a current study, which will be published online yesterday (September 8th) in the journal “Global Change Biology”.

Economists, fisheries and evolutionary biologists from Kiel University, the GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel, and the Finnish University of Helsinki working together in an interdisciplinary project have calculated how fishery and aquaculture will develop in the coming decades in regard to popular types of edible fish such as sea bass, salmon, cod and tuna. These four are among the most important fish species on the North American and European markets. Salmon and sea bass come mostly from fish farming, while cod and tuna stem from wild-capture fisheries.

Read the full story here

 

Powerful typhoon kills 11,000 farmed tuna in Japan: reports

Tokyo, Japan (AFP) — July 24, 2015 — A powerful typhoon which lashed Japan last week has killed more than 11,000 farmed bluefin tuna, costing over $10 million in damage, local media said Saturday.

Typhoon Nangka made landfall in southwestern Japan on the night of July 16 and slowly moved northward before turning into a tropical depression.

Torrential rain and gusts of wind wreaked havoc in various parts of western Japan, also causing high waves and clouding sea water in the fish farm near the Pacific coastal town of Kushimoto, Kyodo News and the Asahi newspaper reported.

Read the full story from the Agence France-Presse at Business Insider

Aquaculture’s Explosive Growth Means Farmers Are About to Run Out of Fish Food

July 14, 2015 —  The booming $170 billion aquaculture industry could face a shortfall of fish meal and fish oil for feed as early as 2016, and demand could outpace fish meal supply by up to 16 MMT (Million Metric Tons) in 2025. The mismatch will hasten the opportunities for alternative sources of feed such as plant proteins, algae and even insects, according to Lux Research.

Fish meal and fish oil are the lifeblood of the aquaculture feed industry, and demand is growing at 8% annually. The demand for fish meal will nearly double by 2025, creating a need for over one million tons of alternative high-protein meal.

“The future of fish feed is a blend of alternatives — no single source will dominate as fish meal has,” said Sara Olson, Lux Research Analyst and lead author of the report titled, “Tightening Fish Meal Supply Creates Opportunities for Aquaculture Feed Alternatives.”

Read the full story at Yahoo

 

Lessons for Alaska: Oregon Shellfish Hatchery Tackles Ocean Acidification

July 13, 2015 — A recent NOAA study pegged 2040 as the date for the potential end of Alaskan shellfish hatcheries. That is, unless serious mitigation efforts are put in place to combat ocean acidification. Last week we reported on the research, done at the Alutiiq Pride Shellfish Hatchery in Seward. Now, we’ll take a look at what a hatchery on the Oregon coast is doing to deal with these harmful changes in ocean chemistry.

The Whiskey Creek Shellfish Hatchery is located in the small town of Tillamook, Oregon.

“This hatchery was started by Lee Hanson,” says Sue Cudd, who owns the hatchery now. “It was really the first shellfish hatchery that was commercial in operation. It started in 1978.”

She studied biology in school, worked for an oyster company for a while, and then came on with Lee Hanson to learn about the hatchery world. From the 1970s until 2006, there were natural ups and downs, but overall, things ran relatively smoothly.

“Then all of a sudden, in about 2006, we started seeing some pretty major problems. Then from the end of 2007 to the end of 2008, we couldn’t produce larvae anymore,” says Cudd.

Inside the Whiskey Creek Shellfish Hatchery – Photo courtesy of ceoas.oregonstate.edu

For a year and a half, they tried to produce. Even when they did manage to get some larvae, they wouldn’t survive and develop. It was a financial nightmare for the business.

“We lose money really fast because the production cost is the same without having any production. So, it was tough,” says Cudd. “We got help from some customers. The oyster growers association [helped] and one of our state senators got us some community development money, so we had time to be able to try to solve this problem. Without that, I don’t know what would have happened because we just lost money so fast.”

Read the full story and listen to the audio at Alaska Public Media

 

IFFO WELCOMES AQUACULTURE STEWARDSHIP COUNCIL RESPONSIBLE FEED STANDARD CONSULTATION

July 8, 2015 — On 30th June 2015, the Aquaculture Stewardship Council (ASC) issued their draft Responsible Feed Standard for public consultation. This is a welcome opportunity to comment on the proposals which form a wide ranging and demanding standard, encompassing environmental impacts, social and welfare requirements, energy usage and other criteria. The consultation document is well written, with clear guidance on where input is required and how this should be submitted.

Although the document also covers the ingredients used to manufacture compound feed, an obvious feature of the draft standard is that the vast majority of the criteria refer to ingredients from marine sources e.g. fishmeal and fish oil. The criteria for land based ingredients, whether vegetable or animal, are very brief in comparison. This is perhaps surprising given that the marine sourced raw materials are the minority of the formulation, typically 10-15% by weight.

Read the full press release from IFFO