FISH MEAL

Fish meal (sometimes spelled fishmeal) is a commercial product made from whole wild-caught fish, bycatch, and fish by-products to feed farm animals, such as pigs, poultry, and farmed fish. Because it is calorically dense and cheap to produce, fish meal has played a critical role in the growth of factory farms and the number of farm animals it is possible to breed and feed.

Prior to 1910, fish meal was primarily used as fertilizer, at least in the UK.

Fish meal is now primarily used as a protein supplement in compound feed. As of 2010, about 56% of fish meal was used to feed farmed fish, about 20% was used in pig feed, about 12% in poultry feed, and about 12% in other uses, which included fertilizer. Fishmeal and fish oil are the principal sources of omega-3 long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids (eicosapentaenoic acid [EPA] and docosahexaenoic acid [DHA]) in animal diets.

The cost of 65% protein fishmeal has varied between around $385 to $554 per ton since 2000, which is about two to three times the price of soybean meal.

The rising demand for fish, as people in the developed world turn away from red meat and toward other sources of meat protein, has increased demand for farmed fish, with farmed fish accounting for half the fish consumed worldwide as of 2016. Demand for fish meal has increased accordingly, but harvests are regulated and supply cannot expand. This has led to a trend towards use of other ingredients such as soybean meal, cottonseed meal, leftovers from processing from corn and wheat, legumes, and algae, and an increase in research to find alternatives to fish meal and alternate strategic uses (for instance, in the growth phase, after newborn fish are established).

Fish used

Fish meal can be made from almost any type of seafood, but is generally manufactured from wild-caught, small marine fish that contain a high percentage of bones and oil. Previously, these fish have been considered unsuitable for direct human consumption, but more recent research indicates the vast majority of fishmeal made from whole wild-caught fish is made from fish suitable for direct human consumption.[8] Other sources of fishmeal are from bycatch and byproducts of trimmings made during processing (fish waste or offal) of various seafood products destined for direct human consumption.

The main fish sources by country are:

Chile: anchovy, horse mackerel

China: various species

Denmark: pout, sand eel, sprat

European Union: pout, capelin, sand eel, mackerel

Iceland and Norway: capelin, herring, blue whiting

Japan: sardine, pilchard, saury, mackerel

Peru: anchovy

South Africa: pilchard

Thailand: various species

United States: menhaden, pollock

It takes four to five tons of fish to produce one ton of fish meal; about six million tons of fish are harvested each year solely to make fish meal.