Why choose farmed over wild fish?
What are fish meal and fish oil, and why are they used in aquaculture feeds?
Fish meal is a powder obtained after cooking, pressing, drying and milling fresh raw fish, while fish oil is a liquid pressed from the cooked fish. Both are produced from harvesting short-lived, fast-growing stocks of small, bony and oily fish for which there is little or no demand for human consumption. By-products or trimmings from seafood processing are an increasingly large contributor to fish meal and fish oil production.
With excellent nutritional value and containing high levels of polyunsaturated fat, they are among the most nutritious and digestible ingredients for aquaculture feeds and species. As such, they are recognised to provide health benefits to farmed animals and to the consumers of these products. These marine ingredients are currently in good supply, but they are also in very high demand from multiple sectors which is why Skretting undertakes extensive ingredient R&D at Skretting Aquaculture Research Centre (ARC). In fact, Skretting is able to make feeds containing no marine ingredients at all.