Saving Seafood

Groups praise updated US government seafood guidance

July 9, 2019 — U.S. seafood groups are lauding an updated government guidance that encourages pregnant and breastfeeding women and children to eat more seafood.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is updating its 2015-2020 Dietary Guidelines for Americans, released in 2017, which recommends that Americans eat at least eight ounces of seafood per week, based on a 2,000-calorie diet. While FDA did not increase the amount of seafood adults should eat, it is emphasizing the nutritional benefits – particularly to pregnant and breastfeeding women as well as children – of eating at least eight ounces of seafood weekly.

The agency also aims to help consumers who should limit their exposure to mercury choose from the many types of fish that are lower in mercury – “including ones commonly found in grocery stores, such as salmon, shrimp, pollock, canned light tuna, tilapia, catfish and cod,” the FDA said in a press release.

However, “it is important to note that women who might become pregnant, or who are pregnant or breastfeeding – along with young children – should avoid the few types of commercial fish with the highest levels of mercury listed on the chart,” FDA said.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

FDA study finds “forever chemicals” in grocery-store seafood

June 4, 2019 — The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has released the results of a wide-scale study investigating the presence of so-called “forever chemicals” in U.S. supermarket food.

The FDA found levels of per- and polyfluoroalykyl (PFAs) and other fluorocarbon resins – which are grease-proofing agents used in non-stick cookware, fast food wrappers, microwave popcorn bags and numerous other foodservice and food retail applications in many foods, including seafood – in market basket sampling done at grocery stores and supermarkets in three undisclosed U.S. cities in the mid-Atlantic region.

The FDA found PFAs at levels ranging from 134 parts per trillion to 865 parts per trillion in tilapia, cod, salmon, shrimp, and catfish, as well as numerous meat products, according to an FDA presentation at the Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry in late May, the Associated Press reported.

FDA spokesperson Tara Rabin told the AP that her agency rated PFAs as “not likely to be a human health concern,” but the levels of chemical contamination found in the seafood tested were more than double the FDA’s recommended 70-parts-per-trillion limit for safe drinking water.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

It’s Time to Be Honest about Seafood

May 28, 2019 — Demand for seafood is increasing across the globe, and the United States is no exception. Aquaculture, or aquatic farming, is increasingly meeting this demand and now supplies just over 50 percent of all seafood globally. In fact, it has been one of the world’s fastest growing food sectors for years.

The U.S. is the largest importer of seafood in the world, and some of Americans’ favorites—including shrimp, salmon and tilapia—are predominantly farmed these days. Yet, we contribute less than 1 percent of the world’s total aquaculture production. This means we rely heavily on other countries to satisfy our appetites for seafood.

If the U.S. does not increase its domestic production of farmed shellfish, seaweed and finfish, the divergence between what we consume and what we contribute to the global seafood market will continue to widen. This gap may make it harder for our seafood diets to be sustainable. It also means the U.S. won’t have a hand in shaping the standards or economies that contribute to the seafood sector as a whole in the future.

A brand-new bill that proposes a moratorium on commercial permits for marine finfish aquaculture facilities in U.S. waters could serve to widen this gap, and it represents another divergence: between public wariness about domestic aquaculture operations and the science showing aquaculture’s potential for sustainable growth.

While wild-caught fisheries have hit “peak fish” domestically and globally, with limited potential for additional sustainable growth, there is mounting scientific evidence that the U.S. could dramatically increase domestic aquaculture production and do so sustainably, as we did with our fisheriesbefore they peaked. And this growth does not have to come at the cost of our wild-caught fisheries or other priorities for our oceans, especially under careful management and planning.

Read the full story at Scientific American

Tilapia, a fish to feed the world, and the deadly virus that may destroy it

May 6, 2019 — A small African fish called the tilapia may be vital for meeting the future food needs of humanity, according to scientists, but they are also concerned that a killer disease discovered in recent years could wipe out the species. That, they warn, would have devastating social and economic consequences for China and the rest of the Asia-Pacific region.

Although its name may not be widely known, the freshwater tilapia is second only to carp as the world’s most widely farmed fish, and China is the largest producer. With global production of farmed tilapia reaching 6.3 million tonnes in 2018 and an estimated market value of US$9.8 billion, the little fish is big business. That’s because it is an essential source of protein, revenue and employment in the developing world.

An advantage of farming tilapia was once its resistance to disease, which is a constant problem in intensive fish farming. But a new virus has caught the industry off guard. Tilapia lake virus, or Tilapia tilapinevirus, was identified in 2014.

Scientists know little more about it, except that it has a morbidity rate of up to 90 per cent, depending on the strain, and is highly contagious. The first indication of the virus on a fish farm is lots of dead tilapia.

Read the full story at the South China Morning Post

Record year for China M&A sees little investment in seafood deals

April 1, 2019 — Seafood seems to be way down the list of sectors attracting investors in China, as agriculture and fisheries investments accounted for just 1 percent of the USD 377 billion (EUR 335.5 billion) invested in 1,866 deals monitored by leading international mergers and acquisitions watchers Mergermarket and Merrill DatasiteOne.

Industries and chemicals accounted for 19 percent of deals in value and 24 percent in volume, topping the list of categories for deals in 2018 in a new ranking compiled by the two financial firms. The technology, media, and telecommunications [TMT] category accounted for 19 percent of value and 10 percent of volume, followed by financial services, with 13 percent and 7 percent, respectively.

Despite the U.S.-China trade war, foreign investors accounted for a record USD 49.1 billion (EUR 43.7 billion) – up 51 percent on 2017 – or 13 percent of the deals done, with nearly half that cash coming from the United States. Foreign investors appeared to be cheered by China’s pledge to lower restrictions on foreign investment into various sectors, a pledge necessitated in part by the gradual slowdown of China’s economic growth.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Taking the sea out of seafood

March 15, 2019 — Land-based aquaculture can sound like a mirage — shrimp farms in the desert, salmon swimming “upstream” in an alpine village tank, tilapia swishing over the plains. And for a long time, ample production of sea delicacies in recirculating aquaculture systems (RAS) has been more dream than reality. Yet the technology and its innovators steadily have gained momentum and finally may be hitting their tipping point.

The allure of fish grown on land is easy to understand: Like all aquaculture, it reduces demand for wild fish, but unlike with sea-based pens, closed-loop RAS farms (PDF) run no risk of fish escaping to dilute the native gene pool, spread diseases or discharge waste and antibiotics into the wild. RAS farmers have near-full control over growing conditions, so they can optimize for growth and quality. And with its amenability to unlikely locations, RAS can sit near major consumer markets, providing fresh local seafood even when the shore is hundreds of miles away.

So why aren’t we eating it already? RAS entrepreneurs face three big challenges: energy; contamination risks; and money. Mimicking a natural system within strictly regulated parameters is an energy-intensive endeavor, and sustainability (not to mention costs) demands locating RAS facilities next to cheap, abundant energy sources. A pathogen let loose in a closed system can be a disaster, so RAS farmers have to be extra scrupulous about avoiding contamination.

Money may be the biggest hurdle: RAS operations need high volumes and relatively long ramp-ups to reach profitability, and the pile of patient capital needed to build and grow large, high-tech facilities can be as elusive as Moby Dick.

Read the full op-ed at GreenBiz

Seafood mislabeling common across North American supply chains, study finds

February 7, 2019 — New research completed at the University of Guelph in Guelph, Ontario, Canada, has found mislabeing is prevalent throughout the supply chain.

Researchers found that 32 percent of fish overall were mislabeled. The highest rate of mislabeling was at retailers (38.1 percent), followed by processing plants (27.3 percent) and importers (17.6 percent).

Conducted in collaboration with the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA), the study was published in the journal Food Research International.

“We’ve been doing seafood fraud studies for a decade,” Robert Hanner, the lead author of the study and associate professor at the University of Guelph, said in a press release. “We know there are problems. But this is the first study to move beyond that and look at where the problems are happening throughout the food supply chain.”

“If you can see the name is changing across the supply system, that’s a red flag,” Hanner told SeafoodSource.

Hanner said he could not definitively prove whether some of the mislabeling is intentional, but found a “pretty significant price differential” in certain substitutions, such as farmed salmon labeled as wild salmon, tilapia labeled as red snapper, and basa labeled as haddock and cod.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

While global tilapia production increases, US imports fall

February 4, 2019 — Tilapia production globally has steadily increased over the past decade – with 2018 production estimated at nearly 6.3 million metric tons (MT) – yet U.S. imports were forecast to likely be at their lowest level in several years.

The data, shared at the Value Finfish panel during the 2019 Global Seafood Market Conference in Coronado, California earlier this month, estimates that the U.S. imported around 300,000 MT of tilapia in 2018. That’s significantly lower than the 500,000 MT high in 2012.

“Through October, through 2014, things have been on a pretty steady decline,” Todd Clark of Endeavor Seafood said.

The declines are clear in U.S. broadline sales, with virtually every commercial category having a steady three-year decline in sales. Commercial medium chains, representing chains with between 100 and 249 units, fell the most with a 46 percent drop in sales. Non-commercial restaurants, which make up the largest share of tilapia purchasing at over 14 million pounds, dropped six percent.

“Each one of those categories has been on a steady decline,” Clark said.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

US tilapia demand falls

January 15, 2019 — Americans’ consumption of tilapia has fallen in recent years, while demand from Russia has surged, according to a new report.

While the United States is still the largest importer of tilapia, imports slid an estimated 10 KT in 2017, according to a Fact.MR report.

The U.S. trends mimic the global tilapia market, which declined 6 percent in the first two quarters of 2017, thanks to weakening consumer demand, Fact.MR found.

Consumers globally are buying other specialty fish and are more interested in pangasius, analysts said.

“A special palate for pangasius has been witnessed among seafood consumers worldwide,” Fact.MR said in the report. “The U.S. and China continue to remain the largest consumers of pangasius. Following the increasing domestic demand and lower prices of pangasius, Chinese tilapia farmers are adopting farming of other fish varieties including pangasius.”

Meanwhile, the Russian Federation imported 4 KT more tilapia in 2017 versus 2016.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

AquaBounty and Intrexon Developing Gene Edited Tilapia; Receive GMO Exemption

December 21, 2018 — SEAFOOD NEWS — AquaBounty and Intrexon announced this week that their jointly developed gene edited line of tilapia is “exempt from GM regulation” according to Argentina’s National Advisory Commission on Agricultural Biotechnology (CONABIA).

Intrexon is a leader in the engineering and industrialization of biology to improve the quality of life and health of the planet. GM salmon farmer AquaBounty is a majority-owned subsidiary of Intrexon.

According to a press release, the engineered tilapia was developed using gene editing techniques and do not contain any foreign DNA or a new combination of genetic material. Because of this, the tilapia is not considered a genetically modified product in Argentina.

“We are focused on developing animal biotechnology for aquaculture and livestock through our subsidiaries to support sustainable food production in the U.S. and abroad,” LTG Thomas Bostick, PhD, PE, Chief Operating Officer of Intrexon, said in a statement. “We are pleased with Argentina’s leadership in establishing a transparent and predictable process for the advancement of products developed with gene editing techniques and see this as a critical development for companies seeking to bring highly innovative solutions to the global market using powerful and highly precise genetic tools. Moreover, enhancing regulatory certainty for products derived from biotechnology is critical to the future of agricultural innovation.”

The engineered tilapia has an improved fillet yield of 70%, a growth rate improvement of 16%, and a feed conversion rate improvement of 14%. The tilapia has a shortened time to harvest, which not only reduces input costs, but increases production output and reduces risk of disease.

AquaBounty CEO Ronald Stotish added that the company is “committed to advancing novel technologies into the marketplace to improve sustainability in aquaculture.” Stotish said that it’s through their collaboration with Intrexon that the company has been able to make “significant progress.”

This story was originally published on SeafoodNews.com, a subscription site. It is reprinted with permission.