Fishy Editorial in the New York Times

A recent editorial in the New York Times (Protein Pyramid, November 10, 2008), weighs in on fish meal consumption by terrestrial and aquatic livestock. Interesting article indeed, but unfortunately lacks some key details. We certainly hope these omissions weren’t on purpose!

Here are some points that will help fill in the blanks;

1. Although 50% of fish meal is used by aquaculture, fish have the ability to convert fish meal into edible protein at a much more efficient rate than terrestrial (land) animals. For example, new diets fed to fish such as salmon and trout have converted into more edible protein – making it a net producer of fish protein (.8 pounds of fish meal convert to 1.0 pound of salmon = .8:1 feed conversion ratio). For comparison sake, poultry at its best will convert feed to meat at a ratio of 2 to 1.
2. The editorial makes no mention of the consumption of fish meal (forage fish like anchovies, sardines, etc.) by the common house cat. The domestic house cat is a very large consumer of fish protein. 
3. While the editorial seems to focus on the ‘farming’ of fish such as salmon, there seems to be an omission of the fact that Alaska salmon ranching is a very large user of fish meal and fish oil. In fact, Alaska salmon ranchers utilize over seven times the amount of fish meal than do salmon farmers on North America’s West coast. While farmers use technology such as camera monitoring for feeding and are replacing fish proteins with vegetable proteins, ranchers simply let their salmon go and forage for food in the wild. No one knows for sure at what conversion rate ranched salmon turn fish protein into body weight, but you can bet that it is less efficient than salmon farming.
4. The global fish meal fishery is one of the best managed fisheries in the world. Despite the growth of aquaculture over the past two decades, the overall consumption of fish meal and fish oil has not increased due to efficencies in conversion rates of aquaculture species.

The New York Times would be well advised to do some homework on the issue of global fish meal usage before attempting to cater to the idealistic views of a few vegans, millions of house cat owners and the Alaska salmon ranching corporations.