International Aquafeed Guest Editor – Dr Kangsen Mai

by Dr Kangsen Mai, Chinese International Editor, International Aquafeed

As we all know, 2018 is a very unusual year. Breaking news continues to shock us from around the world, and this is especially true in aquaculture.

AQUA 2018 of WAS took place from August 25-29 in the beautiful French city of Montpellier. The conference not only demonstrated the achievements of the rapid development of global aquaculture and related industries, but also exposed the tremendous challenges facing the industry: the problems of quality, safety and sustainable development.
 

As the most important aquaculture country in the world, China is facing unprecedented challenges. In fact, China's problem of aquaculture is the epitome of aquaculture's problems in all developing countries. In 2018, China's aquaculture administration departments, universities, research institutes, industry associations and enterprises held more than 100 symposiums, workshops and industry development forums to study and discuss the challenges and opportunities of aquaculture in China, and to find new ways for the healthy and sustainable development of aquaculture in China to flourish.

In 2018, there are two main forces driving the transformation, upgrading and innovative development of aquaculture in China: unprecedented environmental storms and the unprecedented Sino-US trade war. China's most stringent environmental protection law and food safety law put forward higher requirements for the safety of aquaculture products and the sustainable use of aquaculture environment.

The Sino US trade war has greatly pushed up the price of feed ingredients, thus significantly raising the cost of farming. Therefore, it is necessary to study more accurate feed formulation, more scientific feed processing technology, and greatly improve feed efficiency.

Looking back over the past four decades, it can be seen that aquaculture in China had the same developmental characteristics as other industries in China: extensive consumption of natural resources, extensive expansion of scale, one-sided pursuit of high yield, insufficient attention to quality and safety, and lack of concern for environmental protection and sustainability. Now the Chinese have realised that this developmental model will inevitably pay a heavy price and is unsustainable.

Read the full article in the International Aquafeed magazine online, HERE.

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