Grinding up fish to feed to fish is ‘absurd’: fears over UN aquaculture plan

Nearly half of the world’s wild fish catch will be ground into animal feed for farmed fish if plans to expand aquaculture go ahead, a report has found.

The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) is aiming to increase aquaculture – where fish are farmed rather than caught in the wild – production by 75% by 2040.

The plans form part of its “blue transformation” agenda to meet growing global demand for seafood, improve food security and eradicate world hunger by 2030.

But an analysis by Changing Markets Foundation found the plans would potentially pull tens of millions of tonnes of fish from the oceans each year to feed species such as salmon and shrimp.

Aquaculture adds to the intense pressure on overexploited fisheries because food is removed from marine ecosystems and the coastal communities that rely on them.

Aquaculture supplies more than half of the aquatic animals consumed worldwide, according to the report. Carnivorous farmed species are commonly fed fishmeal and fish oil made by grinding down smaller wild fish such as anchovies and sardines.

“These fish are naturally carnivorous species, so that is what they would eat in the wild,” said Tara Ganesh, a senior campaigner at Changing Markets Foundation. “You can’t suddenly raise a salmon overnight that is vegetarian.”

Although producers had reduced the amount of wild fish used for each kilogram of farmed fish, she said this did not mean the industry’s total consumption was falling.

Modelling produced with the University of British Columbia found that, if industry trends continued, up to 34.6m tonnes of wild fish could be caught and fed to farmed species annually by 2040.

The FAO has not specified which species or farming systems should deliver the 75% increase in aquaculture. Changing Markets Foundation modelled several possible routes to the target and found that, under a scenario weighted towards feed-intensive species such as salmon and shrimp, demand for wild fish could rise to 41.4m tonnes – equivalent to 46% of the global wild-fish catch in 2020.

Muhammed Oyinlola, an aquatic ecologist at the University of British Columbia, said: “Our modelling shows that the outcome is not inevitable. A more diversified option favours growth in lower-input species, while ambiguity leaves the door open to growth that threatens communities, fisheries and the climate.”

The scale of the impact would depend heavily on which species and production systems were expanded, the research said. But neither the FAO’s roadmap nor its guidelines for sustainable aquaculture specify how its growth target should be met.

The report also says safeguards addressing the nutritional and food security effects of aquaculture trade and consumption were removed from successive drafts of the guidelines without explanation.

Changing Markets Foundation examined a December 2023 workshop in Ghana organised by the FAO in collaboration with the Global Roundtable on Marine Ingredients, an industry coalition. “Small-scale fisheries representatives instead called for sardinella to be reserved for direct human consumption and for fishmeal factory expansion to be halted,” it said.

West African participants later said the official account of the workshop did not reflect what they regarded as broad opposition among African groups to turning edible wild fish into fishmeal.

In a report presented to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva in June, Elisa Morgera, the UN special rapporteur on climate change, said using nutritionally valuable fish to produce fishmeal and fish oil raised “serious human rights concerns” because it could reduce people’s access to food.

Changing Markets Foundation said the consequences were already visible in Senegal, a west African centre for fishmeal and fish oil production, where factories compete with local communities for the same fish.

Ganesh said: “A large share of those fish come from much poorer communities where that fish is an essential source of nutrition, but also really essential for the livelihoods of coastal communities and artisanal fishers.” Women who process, smoke and sell fish also risk losing an important source of income.

Annual fish consumption per person in Senegal fell by more than 10kg between 1999 and 2019, according to the report. A 2021 Changing Markets Foundation investigation estimated that enough fish to feed 33 million people across west Africa was instead being turned into animal and aquaculture feed each year.

The foundation said the FAO’s target could be met while keeping demand for whole wild fish well below 2020 levels by reducing fishmeal and fish oil use and directing more growth towards species requiring fewer marine ingredients.

Changing Markets Foundation is urging the FAO to introduce safeguards that prioritise edible wild fish for human consumption and direct aquaculture growth towards species requiring little or no fishmeal or fish oil.

“There is an urgent need for safeguards in the FAO’s policy to explicitly preserve wild fish for human consumption,” Ganesh said.

She said the modelling exposed “the absurdity of production systems that essentially rely on other fish to make fish”, adding: “It’s a net loss of fish – a net loss of nutrition.”

The FAO was approached for comment.