ENGO's still don't get the fish meal picture
Just last month the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) expressed concerns that the aquaculture industry may struggle to meet future world demand for fish as a rising population consumes more and more fish. "The aquaculture sector- otherwise known as fish farming- will need to produce 80.5 million tons per year just to maintain current per capita fish consumption", a FAO press release issued on October 6, 2008 stated. In 2006, the sector produced 51.7 million tons, or mearly half of the estimated 100 million tons of fish consumed worldwide. "The need for more fish from aquaculture has been heightened", the agency noted, "because so-called traditional capture fisheries from the world's seas, lakes and rivers have reached a plateau in terms of production.
Then you take the numbers from the capture fishery, where forage fish represent 37 per cent of the total world's ocean catch of fish. Of these approximately 31.5 million tonnes of fish, some 90 per cent, is processed into fish meal and fish oil. In 2002, 46% of all fish meal and 81% of the fish oil supply was used in aquaculture (Stony Brook University and Darwin Aquaculture Centre). While there are a few examples of competition between the human usage of some of these fish and the conversion to fishmeal and -oil, in general there is little interest in eating these fish among the local populations in countries where they are caught. "The fact remains that the production of fishmeal and fish oil results in small, bony, wild fish, which are usually inedible to humans, being ultimately turned into high quality, healthy, fish fillets which are being increasingly demanded by consumers must also be taken into account", states a Darwin Aquaculture Centre report.
The balance of the fish meal production is largely used in feed for poultry (22%) and pigs (24%). These percentages have been coming down, as aquaculture uses more and more of the available fish meal. And there is a good reason for that- fish like salmon convert fish meal to edible protein much better than any other livestock. Researchers in Norway have shown that you can now produce more than one kilo of farmed salmon for each kilo of wild forage fish used. So you take the 31.5 million tonnes of forage fish that is not eaten by humans, convert it to fish meal, and then you can produce close to 31.5 million tonnes of high quality, healthy farmed salmon for human enjoyment.
It doesn't then make much sense for Canadian ENGO's to spearhead statements saying that salmon farming is "threatening the global food supply by fishing the North Atlantic and South Pacific to produce aquaculture feed resulting in a net loss of fish supply available to feed people.." The statement becomes even more inappropriate when one realizes that pretty much all fisheries for forage fish are considered well managed and sustainable. Outside of years with El Niño fenomenons, the catches of Peruvian Anchovy, for example, has remained relatively stable for some 15 years at some 6-8 million tonnes. If fish meal was not fed to farmed fish like salmon, it would still be produced in similar quantities as it is today, but instead fed to pigs and chicken, resulting in less food for humans.
