Opinion By Nick Joy

IF there was any thorny subject that preoccupied me during my long tenure with salmon it has to have been mostly about feed ingredients. I don’t suppose that my focus was necessarily the same as everyone else’s; in fact, I know it wasn’t. When fishmeal and oil started getting restricted in supply, others were looking for methods to grow volume, whereas I was interested in growing difference.

The idea of ‘naturalness’ will no doubt get under some people’s skin, but nonetheless this was precisely what drove my interest.

How do we keep farmed salmon as close to the original as possible through breeding, diet and culture?

Breeding and culture were issues that could be solved at farm level but diet was driven by external factors and required intensive discussions with feed suppliers.

As dietary possibilities became more sophisticated, the relationship between feed supplier and ourselves became, to some degree, a facilitation between the novel developers and us.

This, in turn, put the onus on us to have a view about the different alternatives.

I warn you that there will be some generalisations and opinions coming which may require those of a nervous disposition to look away. I plead necessity, as there were many options and sometimes it required a simplification in order to make decisions.

For instance, I was and am of the view that marine algae, which can produce omega-3 oils, are, in general, a good thing and we tried to find as many people trying to develop them as possible.

Plankton are the grass (even though some are not photosynthesisers) and building blocks of the sea. So, in my naïve view, protein and fats created from these organisms would create the same sort of proteins as you would see in wild marine organisms.

Before anyone jumps down my throat, I am aware that this is not exactly true but it is true enough to make the research into possibilities worthwhile.

It is very pleasing to see that some of the research into this area is bearing fruit.There remain the discussions about dark and light cycle production but better to start somewhere than not at all.

(For those who are not aficionados, and again apologising for the unscientific description, dark cycle involves feeding the algae whereas light cycle uses light.)

We felt that algae produced by light as the critical input rather than feed was the ideal product, but as far as I am aware the problems have not been cracked yet.

So there was a nirvana for us but there were also, and remain, no go areas. GM for us was an absolute no no.

I admit this may be less than fair in some cases. GM in a totally contained environment producing proteins or oils indistinguishable from non-GM can hardly be argued to be damaging the environment or a risk to society.

As most GM uses exactly the same amount of inputs to produce the products they do, I am deeply cynical of their value. However, there may be special cases.

My secondary issue with GM is their unlabelled use in the marketplace. I do accept that they should be allowed access to markets, but only if they are clearly marked as what they are, as long as they meet the criteria of totally contained and indistinguishable.

For companies such as ours, their use would have declared an acceptability which I have never felt nor feel.

It is impossible to reconcile ‘naturalness’ with GM because the one is the negation of the other. Whether you feel that ‘naturalness’ is paramount probably defines how you feel about this issue.

Maybe in 200 years people will know whether GM was a terrible mistake, or they would have worked out how to ensure that it can only be used beneficially.

There have been so many other possibilities for use in feed. Insect protein is, of course, entirely natural to salmonids, especially in freshwater. It seems a perfectly sensible thing to develop this alternative and use it.

Yet the species used have no link to the same countries in which salmonids are native. But then again, we use anchovy meals in our diets and these aren’t native either.

The rights and wrongs in this area are not clear cut. What is very clear is that we must encourage people growing proteins from waste food, which can be fed to fish to create more food.

I once discussed the use of LAPs (land animal proteins) at a sustainability conference in London, suggesting that this would be a way of ensuring the best use of feed process waste.

The general view was ‘yuck’ and so their use was perceived as too risky. This sort of market perception blocks our ability to develop a proper use of the waste from our food industries and we need to try to counter it.

Meanwhile, I laud all of those companies continually trying to find ways forward in this area, whether they be farmers or suppliers. It is a minefield to work in, in both cases.

“Market perception blocks proper use of the waste from our food industries ”