International Aquafeed columnist Roy Palmer attended last week's GOAL, the Global Aquaculture Alliance’s 2013 conference in Paris, France, from 7-10 October, and reports here on Day 1:
The Global Outlook for Aquaculture Leadership (GOAL) meeting in Paris, France was kicked off by Wally Stevens, Executive Director of GAA and he highlighted that collectively we were falling behind the concept of aquaculture production ‘doubling in a decade’.
This issue was further highlighted by Jim Anderson (World Bank) & Ragnar Tveteras (University of Stavanger) when they gave an overview of facts and figures on aquaculture around the world. The main issue was the problems of disease especially in aquaculture shrimp which still accounts for 54% of all shrimp harvested. With a regular increase of 5% on growth being achieved up until two years ago it effectively means that the current production figures are down some 23% on where we should be.
On fish, however, it was mentioned that production has impressively increased fivefold since 1990, albeit this growth has slowed in the last year. Incredibly the industry had grown Whitefish from 2.3 million tonnes to 9.5 million tonnes in the ten years to 2012.
The well respected Anderson said “Disease is the biggest risk to the industry. It undermines financing and market development and yet the industry is chronically under invested in disease management.”
The audience, which was notably over 70% industry (producers, buyers and suppliers), heard much about disease with updates on ISA in Salmon (Fred Kibenge, University of Prince Edward Island) and EMS on Shrimp. On the latter Charoen Pokphand Foods Public Co Ltd.’s, Robins McIntosh, was convinced that June 2013 was when the disease bottomed out and he is hopeful that improvement is happening as a result of the science and research which is discovering more about the disease.
Gorjan Nikolik from Rabobank suggested that whenever there are such issues which affect trade there are winners and losers and he suggested the Chinese market is the winner and the losers are the markets of USA and EU. With the industry not being that well promoted Gorjan said that shelf space shifts and consumer behaviors change and that creates marketing problems as the supply improves.
Nearly 90 percent of the delegates were doing business in either USA (42%), EU (26%) or Asia/Oceania (20%) got updates about production in Greece (Lara Barazi-Yeroulanos), Turkey (Hayri Deniz) and Myanmar (Willem van der Pijl) – all countries on the rise in aquaculture production.
Keynote speaker, Ole- Erik LeRoy, Chairman of Marine Harvest, said that they were leading the ‘Blue Revolution’ – with his company operating in 21 countries, employing 6290 people who are producing some 6 million meals per day through a total production of around 400,000mt of Salmon. Highlighting the fully integration of the business covering production right through processing to retailing (noting the new concept shop ‘Supreme Salmon’) and with about 90 projects in Research & Development covering all aspects of their business including processing and fish feeds.
LeRoy said, “We must demand sustainable growth financially, socially and environmentally where above all we must learn to be transparent – learn that there is no place to hide and use this as a tool. Cultivating the ocean is new and it is essential for world growth and to progress we must rely on innovation, smart regulations from Government, research (especially in sea lice, biology, genetics, nutritional values, etc.), collaboratively planning in regions and industry development.”
He added that, “The most important words in aquaculture are ‘risk management’ and that improvement cannot happen without change.”
There were two important ‘GAA Lifetime Achievement Awards’ made during the program to Bjorn Myrseth and Don Lightner.
Professor Lightner, University of Arizona, is strongly in the limelight at the moment as he is the pre-eminent pathologist of cultured shrimp engaged in trying to solve the massive EMS problem. He directs an OIE reference laboratory for shrimp diseases and his team of researchers are engaged in virology, histology, toxicology, electron microscopy and many other tools for disease diagnosis, pathogen characterization and treatment.
Lightner said, “Over the years he had learned that the primary factors that influence disease were transfer of animals; Government Veterinary services; aquaculture management practices; zonal management and collaboration among sectors.”
Bjorn Myrseth, pioneered Atlantic Salmon smolt production back in the 1970’s and has been a major innovator in aquaculture in a number of continents ever since. Myrseth gave a short case study relating to the Faroese story and highlighted that is was the model that should be used globally.
He also said that he was happy to pass on the basics of fish farming highlighting that “You need to look after your employees ensuring that you train them and empower them, tolerating mistakes. He stressed the importance of brood fish, egg quality and juvenile quality and quantity. Quality is still not realized as much as it should be.”
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| Next year's GOAL will be held in Vietman |
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