Fed aquaculture is growing, and continuing usage of high fishmeal and oil diets may present financial and environmental bottlenecks in the near future. Most aquaculture certification programs address reducing the use of fishmeal and oil through more stringent FIFO or FCR ratios. However, so far, they have not called for the elimination of marine derived components in compound diets. In 2014, The Fish Free Feed (F3) challenge was created as a collaborative effort between NGOs, researchers, and private partnerships to accelerate and support the scaling of innovative, substitute aquaculture feed ingredients such as bacterial meals, plant-based proteins, algae, insect meals, yeast and fermentation by-products to replace wild-caught forage fish. The Challenge winner produced and sold 86,000 mt of feed and received a prize of US $200,000. The contest changed to F3 – Future of Fish Feed, and in the second challenge, we looked for fish oil replacements, while the third challenge was the carnivore challenge, with $200,000 and $300,000 prizes respectively. Our recently completed challenge was the krill meal replacement challenge. All these challenges are predicated on real challenges faced by the industry. While the prizes may not be significant to the biggest feed companies, the press and public relations generated by these challenges are significant.
We believe this is a viable tool for improving the sustainability of aquaculture production in fed species. As aquaculture continues to provide more and more of the global seafood supply more sustainable aquafeeds will be a necessity.