Benefits of Recycled Seafood Waste
A topic that we here at Insta-Pro Intl think about frequently arose once again in a recent article – food waste. It turns out that about 50% of the seafood supply in the US is discarded.
As stated in the article:
“From 2009 to 2013, 2.3 billion pounds of seafood on average in the U.S. was wasted annually. That’s 208 billion grams of protein a year that no one got to eat.”
This is concerning on many levels, especially when considering the following:
- All of the resources that were put into producing this valuable food have been wasted
- Global wild-caught fish numbers have been stagnant for ~25 years, while global seafood demand is increasing, according to one calculation, by more than 2.5 metric tons every minute. This is largely driven by increased population growth.
- Indeed, the trend for the price of exported salmon is clearly up over the last 15 years.
- In order to produce more seafood, fish farming (aquaculture) is rapidly growing around the world.
- Aquaculture requires well-balanced, species-appropriate extruded diets.
- Fish meal, a by-product of processing fish, is an important component of farmed fish diets.
- From everything you’ve read so far, you might expect the price of fish meal to be up over the last 15 years – and, you would be correct assuming that.
Fish meal is a protein-rich ingredient, and is especially important for carnivorous fish, such as salmon, because it contains highly-digestible amino acids that are well-balanced for the needs of carnivores. Fish that traditionally consume other fish have adapted to this type of diet.
So, there are tremendous incentives to recycle some of this wasted seafood, and turn it into high-quality fish meal blends for aquaculture.
High-shear extruders have been used for years to turn by-products into valuable products. I’ve written about this before on the Insta-Pro blog.
If you has access to a supply of discarded seafood, please contact us about turning this waste into a revenue stream for your business.
