Plans by the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) to expand aquaculture by 75% by 2040 could result in almost half the world’s wild-caught fishes being ground down into feed for farmed animals, according to an analysis by the Changing Markets Foundation.
Aquaculture already supplies more than half of the aquatic Nonhuman Animals eaten worldwide. Species commonly farmed for food, such as salmons and shrimps, are carnivores and are fed fishmeal and fish oil made by grinding down smaller wild-caught fishes such as anchovies and sardines.
Modelling produced with the University of British Columbia found that, if current trends continue, up to 34.6 million tonnes of wild-caught fishes could be caught and fed to farmed species annually by 2040. Under a scenario weighted towards feed-intensive species, demand could rise to 41.4 million tonnes, equivalent to 46% of the global wild-caught total in 2020.
Tara Ganesh, senior campaigner at Changing Markets Foundation, said to the |Guardian, “These fish are naturally carnivorous species, so that is what they would eat in the wild… You can’t suddenly raise a salmon overnight that is vegetarian.”
Muhammed Oyinlola, 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.”
Consequences are already visible in Senegal, where fishmeal and fish oil factories compete with local communities for the same fishes, and where annual fish consumption per person fell by more than 10kg between 1999 and 2019. A 2021 investigation estimated that enough fishes to feed 33 million people across West Africa are instead turned into animal and aquaculture feed each year.
Ganesh said the fishes involved often come from poorer communities that depend on them both for nutrition and for the livelihoods of artisanal fishers, adding, “There is an urgent need for safeguards in the FAO’s policy to explicitly preserve wild fish for human consumption.”
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.”
Elisa Morgera, UN special rapporteur on climate change, said in a report to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva in June that using nutritionally valuable fishes to produce fishmeal and fish oil raised “serious human rights concerns.”
