This piece authored by Dr Brett Glencross, was first published in the August 2024 edition of International Aquafeed

I was recently reading the recent June 2024 FAO Report on Global Food Commodity Markets [https://doi.org/10.4060/cd1158en] and one of the key things I noted was that of the global fish and fishery products production statistics, that of the total utilisation of 191.4 million tonnes each year, that 16.7 million tonnes was indicated as feed use. For the most part that 16.7 million tonnes includes the whole-fish, like anchoveta, blue whiting and menhaden, among others, that goes to the production of marine ingredients. In total that is less than 9% of the total fish biomass harvested being used directly as animal feed. While detractors might argue that this is 9% too much, it serves to consider some of the key reasons WHY they might argue as such. The main one being that why should we use potential FOOD as FEED? But marine ingredients are not the only thing used as feed ingredients.

Okay, so then let’s look at the rest of our food production system in that same report. As an example, let’s consider cereal grains with production 2.85 billion tonnes each year, of which more than 1.06 billion tonnes is used as feed. Yes, almost 40% of all cereal grain (e.g. wheat and corn) is fed to an animal. This means that if we can redirect just 1.6% of the use of cereal grains currently being used as feed, then that volume redirected would be equivalent to the entire whole-fish harvest used for marine ingredients. The sheer magnitude of the differences in scale is somewhat mind-boggling. Yet no one seems to be banging-the-drum on replacing corn in chicken feeds or reducing the wheat content of pig feeds.

And this discrepancy made me think of the whole story of fish-in:fish-out (FIFO) and forage-fish-dependency ratios (FFDR) and their persistence in the scientific literature, when clearly there are bigger issues out there if we are really considering the food security story. It is timely then that an industry led review of the use of such metrics has been recently published to provide some balance to the story [https://doi.org/10.1080/23308249.2024.2337426]. In addition to the issue that such metrics focus on only one part of the feed/food system, there are a range of other limitations to their use as well. Things such as that these metrics fail to consider the differences between a well-managed or poorly managed fishery, among others. Things such as that FIFO and FFDR also fail to capture similar issues like the previously mentioned issues with cereal grains which is clearly a significantly larger story, but that FIFO and FFDR only focus on fish. They also fail to capture that in some cases the use of such resources as feed is often the best way to retain nutrients within our food chain. By feeding such resources to animals which go on to become our food, those nutrients ultimately still get transferred along the food-chain to us. The review, along with pointing out many of the failings of such simplistic approaches to food/feed sustainability, does also provide a suggested path forward. And that it will be through using a shared metric system that can be applied to grains, marine ingredients and everything else. So far, the best option being used is life cycle assessment (LCA) analysis. It may not be perfect, but at least it provides a framework whereby we can measure impacts and sustainability using a common system. And if we can measure things better, then surely, we can begin to make decisions to manage things better.