An international team of researchers recently published findings from a life cycle assessment of current and emerging protein ingredients for aqua feeds, in an effort to evaluate the nutritional value, scalability, and environmental performance of each. 

“Our goal was to illuminate potential ways forward for the rapidly growing global aquaculture sector in terms of satisfying multiple objectives related to fish nutrition, profitability, feasibility, and resource and environmental performance,” said Nathan Pelletier, of the University of British Columbia, Canada, lead author of the study (read more here). 

The study examined a representative subset of aqua feed protein ingredients from different sources, including Peruvian anchovy meal, a large scale and energy efficient reduction fishery; BC herring byproduct meal, a smaller-scale, less energy efficient fishery; and soybean meal and soy protein concentrate from both the US and Brazil, each with different production conditions and environmental implications. Also, it looked at US poultry by-product meal and feather meal, each with different nutritional attributes and energy intensities; krill meal, with unique nutritional attributes and an energy intensive fishery; and black soldier fly meal, an emerging protein source. 

Although soy protein concentrate and feather meal have the highest protein levels of the non-fishmeal sources, the study cautions that additional research is needed to identify “semi-essential” nutrients in fishmeal that may need to be replaced or supplemented when utilizing only non- fishmeal proteins [...]