Sustainable Feed
Responsible production
Scottish fish farmers rear their salmon in a way which reflects the natural life cycle of salmon in the wild. Wild salmon eat fish as part of their natural diet and so do farmed salmon. It keeps them healthy and ensures that the farmed salmon we enjoy contains high levels of the Omega 3 essential fatty acids, known to benefit the heart, the brain, joints and the development of babies and children.
Farmers are guided in what they do by scientists and nutritionists, ensuring that the feed they use for their fish is both healthy and sustainable. Enormous progress has been made in fish feed production. The small, bony fish which are included in the feed are used in an extremely efficient way. These are mixed with other sustainably sourced ingredients and farmed salmon now consume around 80% less fish products than their wild cousins. The small, bony fish used in the feed do not generally appeal to human palates, but when they are used sustainably in fish feed, we still gain enormous benefit from their high Omega-3 content. In this way, salmon farming converts unpalatable fish into high quality protein for human consumption.
The feed industry fully supports the recently launched, independently audited IFFO Global Standard for Responsible Supply of Fishmeal and Fish Oil.
The efficiency of use of feed resources is high compared with the production of food from terrestrial animals and is much higher than the feed conversion in wild-catch fisheries. Likewise, the huge increase in aquaculture production that has taken place over the past 30 years has been achieved without any trend of increase in global fish meal production, although there has been a substantial diversion of fish meal use from pig and poultry into aquaculture, and there has been improved efficiency in the use of fish trimmings from the human food-chain for fish meal production.