Alternative feed raw materials

by Erik Hempel, The Nor-Fishing Foundation

The other day I was looking through my library, trying to bring some order back into it after my latest move. Every time I have moved house, my library has become more and more disorganised, and then I have great problems finding what I am looking for.

On this particular day, I came upon a book of proceedings from the “First International Conference on Fish Farming Technology”, which was held in Trondheim, Norway in the month of August back in 1993.
 

The album contains no less than 81 papers on various aspects of modern marine fish farming. These were divided into three main chapters: Juvenile marine fish, Open Production Plants, and Closed Production Systems. In view of the fact that feed constitutes the largest share of any fish farm’s budget, I found it strange that there were no papers on feed production or feed raw materials.

For a long time, we have depended on fishmeal and fish oil as raw materials for fish feed, especially for Salmon and other carnivores. Some decades ago, this was apparently not considered a problem, because there was so much small pelagic fish around, and turning this into fish feed seemed a good way to utilise fish that was not considered suitable for human consumption.

However, things do change with time. As the Salmon industry grew extremely large, more fish meal and especially fish oil was being used for feed, and feed producers started to look around for alternative raw materials. Soybeans were of course a solution, but in the beginning, the fish did not react kindly to a vegetarian diet.

Read more, HERE.

The Aquaculturists

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