Skretting serves sustainability on a plate
Skretting has served up a taste of the future to guests at Aqua Nor by presenting salmon raised for the last six months of its life on feed made without any fish meal or fish oil.
The fish, harvested at 25 months, had been fed on Skretting's Infinity feed since February.
The healthy-giving DHA and EPA Omage-3 content that is normally derived from fish ingredients in the feed was instead provided by algae meal and algae oil.
Alex Obach, managing director of Skretting Aquaculture Research Centre, said the feed was the product of research that began in the 1990s.
He said trials of fish grown on three separate diets - fish meal/oil, vegetable protein and algae, and animal proteins and algae - showed no negative effects of what he refereed to as "zero-zero" diets (no fish meal or fish oil).
Obach said samples tested by Nofima showed small variations of the attributes of the fish but they were well within the normal range.
Infinity feed is available from Skretting in relatively small quantities now but the company is intending to scale up production as larger quantities of algae products become available from a $200 million factory being built by Evonik and DSM in Nebraska, USA. That is expected to happen by 2019.
Referring to the need to find sustainable alternatives to fish meal and fish oil, Obach said: "Talking about fish meal replacement 20 years ago was almost like swearing in church that 20 years. It wasn't done. Now it's a reality."
Norwegian folk favourite, TV star and former representative of the Norwegian Seafood Export Council in Asia, Arne Hjeltnes, presented the event.
Gilpin Bradley, managing director of Wester Ross Fisheries, the oldest independent, owner-operated salmon farm in Scotland, explained how a sustainable business can be used for differentiation and in marketing. Bradley, also chairman of the Scottish Salmon Producers' Organisation (SSPO), said: "I spend my life being a little fish in a shark-infested pond."
He added: "We have been risk-averse and that has allowed us to keep going."
Bradley stressed the importance of using social media and keeping customers informed about life on the fish farms.
Lise Von Krogh, a recognised nutrition biologist, explained the importance of raw materials and fat in the context of human nutrition.
