Word: fishmeal
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...doubled since that time. Here's the catch: It takes a lot of input, in the form of other, lesser fish - also known as "reduction" or "trash" fish - to produce the kind of fish we prefer to eat directly. To create 1 kg (2.2 lbs.) of high-protein fishmeal, which is fed to farmed fish (along with fish oil, which also comes from other fish), it takes 4.5 kg (10 lbs.) of smaller pelagic, or open-ocean, fish. "Aquaculture's current heavy reliance on wild fish for feed carries substantial ecological risks," says Roz Naylor, a leading scholar...
...publicly funded research have significantly mitigated this inefficiency and reduced the percentage of fish and oil content in aqua-feed, replacing it with vegetable proteins and oils. "I would say cost, the sustainability of resources - pelagic fisheries - and human health concerns have been driving researchers to find replacements for fishmeal and fish oil - and we are doing this to the greatest extent possible," says Dr. David Higgs, a fish nutritionist for the Canadian government who works closely with British Columbia's $450 million salmon industry. (Reducing the fish content in feed also reduces the accumulation of PCBs in farmed fish...
...contrast, the fish species at the core of the millennia-long tradition of fish-farming in Asia and parts of Africa - catfish, carp and milkfish - actually require less fish input than is ultimately harvested, because they are herbivorous or omnivorous. In Asia, the idea of feeding several times more fishmeal to get one pound back would seem sheer folly. "Ultimately that is really where the solution is - to cut back on these carnivorous species and turn our attention to these plant-eating ones," says U. Rashid Sumaila, a bioeconomist at the University of British Columbia (UBC). "Whether we are willing...
...from the UBC Fisheries Centre. One third of that feed goes to China, where 70% of the world's fish farming takes place; China now devotes nearly 1 million hectares (close to 4,000 sq. mi.) of land to shrimp farms. And about 45% of the global production of fishmeal and fish oil goes to the world's livestock industry, mostly pigs and poultry, up from 10% in 1988. If current trends continue, demand for fish oil will outstrip supply within a decade and the same could happen for fishmeal by 2050, says Stanford's Naylor. Already, the global supply...