How Poultry byproducts Can Help Reduce Aquaculture’s Environmental Footprint

Using poultry-based ingredients instead of fish meal ad fish\r\noil in aquafeeds could help to substantially lower the aquaculture sector’s\r\nenvironmental footprint, according to new research. The environmental impact of\r\nusing ingredients such as hydrolyzed feather meal, poultry byproduct meal and\r\npoultry fat in aquafeeds has been assessed in a new study by Aquasoja.

Aquasoja focuses on the development, production and\r\nmarketing of integrated feed solutions for aquaculture

The Portuguese firm explains that, while these ingredients\r\nmay be excellent protein and lipid sources, as well as being readily available\r\nand relatively low priced, it is important to conduct an environmental life\r\ncycle assessment (LCA) of them. And their study analysed four impact\r\ncategories: global warming, abiotic depletion, acidification and\r\neutrophication.

Summarising their results the researchers said: “Overall,\r\nthe production of feed ingredients from poultry byproducts has relatively low\r\nimpacts for the categories analyzed, and they could therefore be used as\r\nenvironmentally sustainable ingredients in animal feeds, particularly in the\r\naquafeed industry. Furthermore, our study showed that the impact of these\r\ningredients is much lower than traditional fishmeal and fish oil, indicating\r\nthat using them as replacers would decrease substantially the environmental\r\nimpacts of aquafeed production in the impact categories considered.”

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The feed research specialist will be sponsoring session PS17\r\nNutrition: Animal ingredients in aquafeed, at AE2019 in\r\nOctober, where these results will be presented in more detail.

Source : The Fish Site