The authors of a new study on aquafeed composition as it relates to environmental sustainability in European aquaculture are asking industry to “make better use of what we already have.”

The study “Sustainable aquafeed? The devil is in the detail” published in Journal of Cleaner Production was led by Björn Kok and Wesley Malcorps of the University of Stirling’s Institute of Aquaculture.

It found that two decades of lower fishmeal and fish oil inclusion in aquafeed corresponds with a substantial increase in the industry’s overall environmental footprint.

The study used Index Decomposition Analysis, which allowed researchers to separate the effect of different drivers and ultimately breakdown what is driving change across the entire European aquaculture industry.

The research found that as marine ingredients were replaced by plant-based ingredients such as soy protein concentrate and rapeseed oil, the environmental footprint of European aquaculture as an industry grew.

“Reducing dependence on marine resources has been treated as the main environmental sustainability goal in aquaculture. However, if environmental sustainability assessments focus on a single headline metric, they risk telling an incomplete, and sometimes misleading, story. We need a comprehensive view on environmental sustainability,” Kok said in a news release.

The study found that over 20 years, the European aquaculture industry nearly doubled while reducing its use of wild‑caught fish as feed by 13 per cent. Over that same period, greenhouse gas emissions rose by 314 per cent, land use by 594 per cent and water consumption by 236 per cent. Marine eutrophication – the build-up of excess nutrients that trigger harmful algal growth in water – rose 630 per cent and freshwater eutrophication rose 468 per cent.

“We need to make better use of what we already have, such as fish processing by-products, which are rich in nutrients and have a low environmental footprint,” Malcorps said in the release.

Malcorps added that novel aquafeed ingredients have potential to support long-term industry growth but have challenges around consistency, supply and costs. “At their current stage of development and scale, they have yet to deliver the environmental sustainability performance many expected” he said.

The study was done in partnership with Blue Food Performance Ltd, University of Zurich, and Utrecht University.

Hatchery International

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