Wild fish stocks squandered to feed farmed salmon, study finds

Wild fish stocks squandered to feed farmed salmon, study finds

Source: theguardian

3/2/2022

Credit: Murdo MacLeod/The Guardian

Shoppers’ appetite for salmon is causing millions of tonnes of nutritious mackerel, sardines and anchovies to be wasted as fish feed, according to new research.

Its authors say farming salmon is an inefficient way to produce nutritious seafood, calculating that half to 99% of minerals, vitamins and fatty acids in the wild-caught fish are not retained when fed to farmed Atlantic salmon.

They say removing wild-caught fish from aquaculture feed production and diverting them to human consumption, and farming more carp and fewer salmon, could increase global seafood production by 6.1m tonnes, while leaving 3.7m tonnes of fish in the sea.

Lia ní Aodha, of Feedback Global, which worked on the report said: “Salmon farming is a good example of how deeply inefficient and inequitable the global food system is. Much of the nutrient-rich fish used to feed farmed salmon is sourced from regions in the global south, where food insecurity is endemic, while the salmon is mainly sold to consumers in high-income markets in Europe, North America and parts of Asia.”