This piece authored by Dr Brett Glencross, was published in The International Aquafeed Magazine, in June 2023.

It seems everyone is searching for sustainability at the moment. In the feed sector it seems most of the big feed companies have made statements to the effect of decreasing their impact by 30% by 2030 or something to that extent. What is encouraging in these ambition statements is the move to set measurable targets, because if you can’t measure something, you can’t manage it. Starting with a carbon-footprint analysis of feed production quickly demonstrates that between 70% to 90% of the footprint of feed is linked to its raw materials, so anything we can do to improve what we use, has significant impacts straight away. So, what are some of those things being considered in terms of positive actions?

First up is responsible sourcing. Making sure that the resources we use come from well managed fisheries (whether forage or human consumption). But this isn’t just a fisheries story, the other important natural resource we rely on is soil and natural terrestrial systems. We can limit the amount of land conversion involved in our raw material supply chains, and better manage our agricultural practices, thereby protecting the soil and valuable carbon stores in those critical ecosystems.

By increasing the use of circular ingredients, we can reduce pressure on production and harvest demands by better utilising resources that are already available. This doesn’t necessarily need to extend to conversion of those resources into novel and alternative ingredients like insect meals.  Many by-products of existing food production systems already have useful nutritional attributes. Fishery by-products are a classic example here that is frequently overlooked. Most of the world’s fishoil and about a third of global fishmeal supplies are now from such by-products, using about six million tonnes of food waste each year. But this is estimated to be less than a third of the fishery by-product biomass available from fish harvested for food. We still need better coordination of waste collection to capitalise on the potential scale of available ingredients in an economically feasible way while maintaining quality and safety standards.

And finally, one of the often-overlooked ways of improving sustainability is through nutritional innovation. Those innovations that enhance feed efficiency and health, have multiplier effects in decreasing the footprint of production. A simple look at the way things like forage fish dependency ratios (FFDR) are calculated quickly shows that feed conversion (FCR) is a multiplier part of the equation. So, any improvement here has a marked effect on reducing impacts throughout the chain. However, nutritional innovation is a broad area and includes improved formulation specifications, ingredient quality enhancement, better feeding and management models that provide many options for improving efficiency. And I’m sure there are more that I haven’t yet found. But then we’re all searching for sustainability in some format or other. Sustainability is the north star. Responsible practices are the way to progress in this direction.