Alan Cook is leading the company’s next chapter in Atlantic Canada after a turbulent first year in the region. P. 14
WORKFORCE
Labor shortage
North American seafood farmers face pressure from staff shortages as recovery begins. P. 12
CERTIFICATIONS
Farm audits
Remote audit will remain a vital tool in certification postCOVID. Experts discuss how farms can help make the process more efficient. P. 26
NUTRITION
Novel feed ingredients
Aquaculture’s deep push for nutrition innovation bodes well for alternative feed. P. 22
REGULATIONS
New FDA rules
Farm-to-table traceability rules are about to get tougher. What does it mean for seafood farmers? P. 32
Liza Mayer
Mayer
Ruby Gonzalez
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Life lessons from a heat wave
The scramble for ways to cool down during the heat wave last June brought climate change closer to home for my family and for other British Columbians. The record-breaking temperatures caused the deaths of up to 570 people in BC, which is 70 percent of the “sudden deaths” in the province that month, according to the province’s chief coroner.
In the United States, NOAA identified eight weather/climate disaster events in the first six months of 2021, with each event causing damages in excess of $1 billion.
We’ve seen how fluctuating temperatures have killed marine animals and impacted operators financially in aquaculture’s brief history. Who could forget the deaths of millions of oyster larvae in the Pacific Northwest in 2007 that catapulted “ocean acidification and oysters” to the front page, or the 2.6 million farmed salmon that died in Newfoundland in 2019 due to prolonged warm water temperatures?
These are sobering statistics; unfortunately, these extreme-heat episodes will likely become more frequent, say scientists. Due to climate change, consumers’ scrutiny of how their seafood is produced, what type of energy is used to produce it and how the feed fed to these marine animals impacts the environment will heighten. Not even the much-ballyhooed RAS method of production will escape scrutiny. As our report on P. 16 says, RAS operators should be ready with answers. For a shellfish farmer in Alaska, the heat wave episode boosted sales as West Coast farms saw major closures because of the heat, but it is alarming even for them (P. 12).
For our household, the heat wave became an opportunity to offer our adolescent son some insight into this phenomenon and how he can help the earth recover by the consumer choices he makes – including eating sustainably farmed seafood.
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ON THE COVER: Alan Cook, Managing Director of Mowi Canada East PHOTO: ALAN COOK
Norway rethinks aquaculture licensing system Norwegian authorities will review aquaculture licensing regulations to discern whether they are still fit for purpose.
Currently, the size of farming permits is based on the ‘maximum allowable biomass’ (MTB), which states how many tons of salmon can be left in the cages at any given time. A review committee will assess whether MTB is still the most suitable tool to determine the size of farming permits.
The audit is part of a new strategy called “A Sea of Opportunities,” which will guide the industry over the next 10 to 15 years. Its message: growth will come, but it must happen sustainably.
By 2050, Norway plans to produce 5 million MT of salmon and trout per year, which is almost five times the current volume.
The plan acknowledges offshore and land-based aquaculture as potential components of this growth. It will look into facilitating suitable recirculating aquaculture systems (RAS) technology and offshore.
Grieg’s Newfoundland operations remain on target despite snag
Grieg Seafood Newfoundland expects to reach its 2025 target harvest of 15,000 tonnes despite the culling of 1 million smolts this past summer because one fish was found to have the infectious salmon anemia virus (ISAv).
The company said no other sample was found to have the virus; however, out of abundance of caution it culled the entire batch raised at its brand-new recirculating aquaculture system (RAS) smolt facility in Marystown, Newfoundland.
Mystery solved Scientists uncover culprit behind shellfish die-offs every summer
Back in the summers of 2018 and 2019, the shellfish industry in Washington State was rocked by mass mortalities of their crops.
“It was oysters, clams, cockles — all bivalve species in some bays were impacted,” says Teri King, aquaculture and marine water quality specialist at Washington Sea Grant.
“They were dying, and nobody knew why.”
King and research partners have now discovered that an algae species called yessotoxin is the culprit.
Previously under the radar, an algae species will now be monitored so shellfish farmers are forewarned of its presence
The algae species, which is produced by blooms of certain phytoplankton, was previously not monitored because it is not a threat to human health.
The discovery that it is the cause of shellfish mass mortalities has significant implications for shellfish growers in the region. It will now be added to a real-time phytoplankton monitoring program so shellfish producers and natural resource managers can make informed decisions, such as harvesting their product early, or strategizing to save as much crop as possible.
“We are working towards being able to help growers count the cells of yessotoxin-producing organisms in the water and correlate it to an action level,” says King.
“We will not risk introducing the virus into the environment. The company has stated all along that the farming region will be developed gradually and responsibly to optimize biological conditions and to ensure sustainable operations,” said Knut Skeidsvoll, managing director of Grieg Seafood Newfoundland.
This fish culled would have been the first batch to be transferred to
Atlantic salmon smolt. The postponement of the fish transfer to the net pens has only minor financial impact, says Grieg NL
the sea, in Placentia Bay, where they would have grown to market size. Instead, a new generation of fish will be transferred in the spring of 2022. The new batch of fish, around 3 million, will be harvested in 2023 and 2024.
“Our plans and vision beyond this first group of fish have not changed, and we are using the experience gained to improve for the next generation. We are confident that we will be able to build a strong farming region in Newfoundland during the next years, and create jobs and value for the local communities here,” said Skeidsvoll.
The financial impact of the postponement is minor, as the first group of fish had few individuals (1 million) compared to regular operations (3 million), said the company.
Too much of a good thing is bad, so researchers in Norway say they are striving to further develop the methods for reducing iodine content in seaweed so that consumers can confidently enjoy products with kelp.
Seaweed is one of the best food sources of iodine, but in large quantities iodine can be harmful, say Nofima researchers.
“If you eat too much iodine, the body will automatically try to prevent overdose by stopping the uptake. For some, the uptake does not recommence when the iodine level in the body decreases. Thus, excessive intake of kelp can prevent the uptake of iodine and cause iodine deficiency, with subsequent health problems. The health authorities recommend a daily intake of 150 micrograms of iodine for adults,” says the esteemed research institution.
Macroalgae is one of the largest renewable resources in the world but, as in North America, it is not widely utilized in the Nordic region. Nofima and the Norwegian government have made macroalgae a strategic area of focus.
Efforts to make seaweed safer to eat is but one of the areas of study in the Nofima-funded project called TastyKelp. The study will also look into enhancing market knowledge and address processing-capacity issues of the seasonal product, in order to help the business community boost its commercial viability.
New study confirms Antarctic krill meal as fit substitute for fish meal
A new study has found Antarctic krill meal as a suitable replacement for fishmeal in diets for European seabass after feeding trials showed positive effects on fish growth performance, feed utilization and liver metabolism.
In the study, European sea bass were fed a practical diet with either a 15-percent fishmeal content, or the same diet substituted by 30-percent or 50-percent Antarctic krill meal for 12 weeks in triplicates. At the end of the feeding trial, growth performance, liver morphology, liver proximate composition, lipid classes and fatty acid profiles, as well as the expression of hepatic genes related with lipid metabolism were evaluated.
“Our results indicate that krill meal inclusion up to 7.5 percent as fishmeal replacement in practical diets for European sea bass improves growth performance, feed utilization and liver health status,” said Silvia Torrecillas, senior researcher at Research Group in Aquaculture in Spain.
Crustacean known as krill has high nutritional value
Antarctic Krill meal in European Seabass diets improved growth, feed efficiency and liver health status
PHOTOS: AKER BIOMARINE
Earlier studies have proven the positive effects that krill meal has on the performance and health of fish. As a rich source of Omega-3s in phospholipid form, it is seen as a sustainable option for improving aquaculture feed quality for farmed fish and shrimp.
“A sustainable growth of the aquaculture industry implies the use of eco-friendly ingredients as alternative to the traditional marine protein and lipid sources,” said Torrecillas.
Scientists from the Research Group in Aquaculture (GIA) IU-ECOAQUA (Spain) and Aker BioMarine conducted the study.
Free tutorial on growing oysters
Everybody loves a freebie. How about learning how to grow oysters?
A suite of 13 educational sessions on growing oysters in the Gulf of Mexico is online at https://oyster-culture.teachable.com/. Florida Sea Grant and the University of Florida’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences said the online course is designed for beginners and those interested in learning about the prospects of off-bottom oyster culture in the Gulf of Mexico region. They hope their project could help boost the number of oyster farming operations in the Gulf of Mexico, which dwindled after the BP oil spill in 2010.
From Getting Your Farm Started to Harvesting a Crop of Oysters, the availability of the 13 videos “does not end,” they said.
Seaweed is one of the best food sources of iodine, but in large quantities iodine can be harmful
Stress and tiredness key factors in farming accidents
Stress and fatigue are a key cause of farming accidents, says a new study from the University of Aberdeen in Scotland.
“We found consistently that farmers’ stress and fatigue can negatively affect their mental picture of what is going on, which leads to accidents and incidents,” said researcher Ilinca-Ruxandra Tone.
In the UK, agriculture is the most dangerous industry, measured by fatality and injury rate, the study says. Farm deaths rose by 60 percent this year to a total of 34 fatalities, significantly higher than the five-year average.
In the United States, animal production and aquaculture ranked 6th among industries with the highest rates of workplace injuries, with 5.6 cases per 100 workers, according to 2019 data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. (Couriers and messengers experience the highest workplace-related injuries with 8.1 cases per 100 workers).
In Canada, aquaculture occupational health and safety is understudied, according to a study led by Cory Ochs of the Ocean
Shellfish farms help communities save millions in water-cleanup costs
Everyone knows that an oyster filters up to 50 gallons of water per day. But what if shellfish aren’t there to do this job? What would it cost to remove just nitrogen with wastewater treatment improvements, septic system upgrades, and storm water management?
A “novel and transferable” study got answers from one upscale New England coastal community that worked with shellfish biologists, economists, and modelers from National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and Stony Brook University to quantify the benefits. The final calculation: $2.8 to $5.8 million per year.
“Nitrogen remediation is just the tip of the iceberg — but still appreciable at the municipal level,” said Gary Wikfors, a study co-author and chief of the Aquaculture Sustainability Branch at NOAA’s Northeast Fisheries Science Center.
For the study, two local shellfish growers, Atlantic Clam Farms and Stella Mar Oysters, provided data on their annual shellfish
Frontier Institute, Memorial University of Newfoundland. Her team’s analysis of provincial occupational injury compensation claims showed “marine aquaculture workers are suffering from similar injuries (injury event, nature and source of injury, body parts) across provinces.” These are similar to aquaculture sector injury claims patterns in Norway, Finland, Australia, and the United States,” added the study, which was published in July in ScienceDirect.
The University of Aberdeen study showed that situation awareness lapses were present in all accidents and incidents reported and that many lapses occurred at the “perception” level, such as a failure to notice something.
Other lapses in situation awareness were described at the “comprehension” level in the form of an incorrect or incomplete understanding of the situation, such as misjudging the size of a vehicle. Some of these incidents were attributed to a recent change in equipment or machinery or over-familiarity with existing equipment.
AquaBounty to farm GE salmon in small Ohio town
A small village in Northwestern Ohio will be home to a new AquaBounty facility that will raise genetically engineered (GE) salmon.
The new farm is will be AquaBounty’s second in the United States; the first one is in Albany, Indiana. The Ohio farm is planned to have an annual production capacity of 10,000 metric tons of AquaAdvantage salmon, roughly eight times the Indiana farm’s annual capacity of 1,200 metric tons.
Construction of the 479,000-sf facility will begin this year. AquaBounty expects commercial stocking of salmon to commence in 2023.
The $200-million investment is expected to create 112 new jobs in Northwest Ohio.
two approaches: a formula from an existing nutrient trading program and an estimate of what it would cost to achieve the same result with human-engineered approaches.
Part of the challenge in Greenwich is that over half of the nitrogen comes from “nonpoint sources,” such as fertilizing residential lawns and golf courses. (That’s in contrast to “point sources,” such as treated waste water.)
“Nonpoint source input is often more challenging and expensive to reduce than point source input, requiring a multifaceted strategy,” according to NOAA Northeast Fisheries. But that’s where shellfish shine.
The study, which appeared in Environmental Science and Technology and was publicized in the Greenwich Free Press, holds insights for aquaculture proponents and municipalities alike.
harvest and local aquaculture practices. (Both the hard clams and eastern oysters are bottom-grown in the Long Island Sound.)
Scientists applied the expected nitrogen content sequestered in their tissues and shells to the number of animals harvested.
To put a dollar value on the nitrogen removal service by the shellfish, the study pursued
Says Wikfors, “When I was thinking about valuation of these ecosystem services, I thought it might lead to money for growers. But they told me, ‘We don’t actually want the money. We want to make this contribution to our communities in return for social license to farm.’”
– By Lynn Fantom
NOAA researcher Mark Dixon taking environmental samples in Greenwich Bay
Scientists injected salmon with virus blamed by activists as coming from fish farms. Here’s what they found
A new study on piscine orthreovirus (PRV) has lent credence to earlier findings that the virus poses a “very low risk” to British Columbia’s population of wild Pacific salmon and that they remain physically fit even when infected.
In the latest study released in July, researchers at the University of British Columbia (UBC), Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) and the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Fisheries say wild Pacific sockeye salmon injected with PRV in the nine-week experiment functioned normally, with their respiratory performance unaffected.
“We saw little to no effect on sockeye salmon’s respiratory fitness after PRV-infection and minimal impacts on their ability to sustain the vigorous activity needed to migrate, catch prey and avoid predators,” said Dr Yangfan Zhang, a post-doctoral researcher in UBC’s faculty of land and food systems and the department of zoology, and the joint lead author of the study.
PRV infects most farmed Atlantic salmon and just a small proportion of wild Pacific salmon. It has been linked with a fatal condition called heart and skeletal muscle inflammation (HSMI). Anti-salmon-farming activist have blamed fish farms as passing the virus on to wild salmon.
Two studies earlier studies, released in March 2019, have suggested that PRV may only be a contributing factor to fish developing HSMI. DFO researcher Mark Polinski, who is joint lead author in the latest study, was involved in the two 2019 studies. Findings from those studies showed the disease “can’t just be blamed on the presence or absence of PRV,” he said.
The latest, nine-week study found no physiological differences between PRV-infected fish and a control group injected with a salt solution. “This means PRV poses a very low risk to British Columbia’s population of wild Pacific salmon,” Dr Zhang says.
Polinski added that “the (latest) findings highlight that not all animal viruses cause notable harm during infection.”
The study used sockeye salmon in the study because they migrate near salmon farms.
“This is the first study to show that sockeye salmon can be a carrier of PRV without untoward physiological effects to their respiratory system,” says Dr Tony Farrell, a professor and Canada Research Chair with UBC’s faculty of land and food systems and the department of zoology, and one of the principal investigators in the study.
Sockeye salmon were used in the study because they migrate near salmon farms PHOTO: OLGA VASIK/WIKIMEDIA
Globe & Mail piece is more than just about wild salmon
BY LIZA MAYER
AGlobe & Mail article in July reported “BC restaurants remove wild salmon from their menus as a political statement about over-fishing” and quoted a chef from Vancouver who is refusing to serve farmed salmon from BC. He chooses to get it instead from New Zealand -- a 12,000-kilometer flight which accrues 902 kg in CO2 emissions.
A Canadian supplier to the aquaculture industry called the report a “puff piece” that gives a few restaurants a platform for “guerilla advertising.”
Looking behind the headline, the piece shows that fearmongering by anti-fish-farming activists is working and, as the chef quoted in the article suggested to Aquaculture North America (ANA), restaurateurs’ fear of reprisal from these same activists.
According to the article, some chefs in British Columbia removed wild salmon from their menus after significant cuts to commercial fishing in BC and the Yukon were announced by the Department of Fisheries and Oceans in June in order to stabilize and rebuild wild salmon stocks.
“It is somewhat disheartening to see that an aggressive, highly funded activist campaign has influenced BC Chefs to look elsewhere for sustainable seafood when the truth is that it’s been here all along,” says
Dean Dobrinsky, Communications Director at Mowi Canada West.
“British Columbia should be home to a thriving, sustainable fishery where both BC wild and BC farmed salmon are celebrated in our restaurants and kitchens.”
Chef Ned Bell, who is among the chefs interviewed for the Globe & Mail piece, isn’t surprised. He tells ANA: “Chefs are now afraid to step into the ring because they know that if they say they’re going to put farmed BC salmon on the menu, they’re going to be attacked. So they would rather run the risk of making a far less sustainable choice and import Chinook salmon that is farmed in New Zealand into Canada.”
Bell, executive chef and partner at Naramata Inn in the Okanagan Valley, has always been a vocal supporter of sustainable aquaculture. He believes that ocean farming and aquaculture have a crucial role to play in keeping our oceans healthy.
“Unfortunately the activists have done a very good job vilifying an industry that doesn’t deserve it,” says Bell, who has switched to locally farmed trout and farmed Arctic char.
“Was aquaculture perfect 30 years ago? No. Is it much, much better now? Yes. Does that mean that consumers are going to start choosing farmed over wild salmon? I don’t think so. I really don’t. I think they might choose other species first. They might still
salmon a huge disservice
look for imported salmon from Alaska or Russia before they choose some other species that they have been told incorrectly for a very long time that it is ‘bad’.”
The British Columbia Salmon Farmers Association says “choosing to buy local and put sustainably farmed BC Atlantic salmon on your plate is a responsible alternative to wild salmon. This helps to reduce the demand on the wild stocks, and has a much smaller overall environmental footprint than imported fish or seafood.”
While the Globe & Mail report might not be what the aquaculture industry wants to hear, it is important because it helps continue the conversation about fish farming, says Bell.
“Activists that have done farmed salmon a huge disservice. And I don’t think one (wild) should benefit the other (farmed). I think they should co-exist. It’s an “and” conversation not an “or” conversation
“Stop letting the very vocal environmental activists getting your head,” he suggests. “Think for yourself; don’t let other people think for you. Do the research; that’s what I do.”
Mowi personnel welcome sustainable seafood advocate, Chef Ned Bell, at the company’s Hardwicke Island site in Campbell River, BC in 2019. Bell says activists have done BC farmed
PHOTO: LIZA MAYER
Atlantic salmon farmed by Cermaq in British Columbia PHOTO: CERMAQ
Norway, Scotland offer sage advice to Canada on BC farmed salmon industry
“Slowly does it” sums up the sentiment of experts from Norway and Scotland in their advice to Canada as the country begins the process to move British Columbia away from open-net pen salmon farming to other forms of production systems.
Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) netted advice from both countries – the first and third largest producers of farmed Atlantic salmon worldwide – during the public consultation sessions ahead of the push to fulfill the 2019 campaign promise of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of transitioning the BC industry by 2025.
“Closed containment technologies (land or marine) may solve certain challenges but can introduce their own unique set of potential issues, particularly with regard to energy requirements, water quality, water chemistry and dissolved gas management,” the Scottish government offered in a public consultation session conducted by DFO. “A great deal of R&D investment is required.”
Norway’s center for research and innovation – CtrlAqua – also offered some insights. It said the idea of growing salmon to market size in land-based closed containment is quite new, with only one such facility in operation (i.e. Fredrikstad Seafood). Many projects are at different stages in the pipeline but the technology will need to be proven successful before others jump in, it suggested.
The Norwegian and Scottish governments caution Canada about the plan to switch to closed-containment
There are members of the public who also felt that the process to transition the industry from open-net-pen salmon farming, with an eye towards the 2025 deadline, is “happening too fast.” But there were others that said it must happen as soon as possible, according to the interim report released in August by MP Terry Beech, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans, who conducted the public consultations.
Earlier, the BC salmon farmers called on the federal government to set aside the decision to give everyone with a stake in salmon farming time to develop a plan to minimize the serious impacts of the decision.
The public consultation discussed potential alternative farming systems, including
land-based and marine-based systems, the latter ranging from offshore aquaculture, semi-closed containment systems and marine closed-containment systems. Hybrid systems the current mode in use in BC, was also discussed.
Participants acknowledged that wild Pacific salmon is faced with many threats, including fishing, climate change, habitat loss, forestry and urbanization. While some saw open-net pen farms as a “source of additional harm” to wild salmon, others expressed the view that these farms do not pose significant risk.
Amidst the diverging views, certain things are clear: participants agree that government must do everything in its power to protect and restore wild salmon populations in BC, and any responsible transition strategy must position the sector for growth and job creation, with particular attention to rural and coastal economies.
Beech noted the urgency to come up with a transition plan because 109 fish farm licenses are up for renewal in June 2022. He says a study measuring the impact of the December 2020 decision to shut down 19 salmon farms in the Discovery Islands of BC on the economy and on local marine ecosystems should inform the transition strategy.
“The decisions made during this transition will have a significant impact on the livelihoods of British Columbians, and it will be important for us to work together to build a shared vision for a responsible path forward. Done correctly, I believe this can be part of a larger, multi-pronged approach to recover Pacific salmon stocks to traditional levels of abundance while growing a globally competitive and sustainable aquaculture industry in BC,” he said.
farming PHOTO: BCSFA
Big or small farms alike are reporting staff shortages, as are foodservice establishments
N. American seafood farmers face pressure from staff shortages as recovery begins
BY LIZA MAYER
Arguably the hardest hit among seafood farmers during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, oyster growers are well on their way to recovery, as are finfish farmers, but a shortage of skilled workers could potentially slow the pace of growth of the entire industry.
“Virtually every product category is running at a full capacity as we work to sustain with our smaller crews. Like so many businesses, we are having a real challenge with staffing,” says Bill Dewey, director of public affairs at Washington State-based Taylor Shellfish Farms, the largest producer of farmed shellfish in the United States.
He says farm operations made do with smaller crews, making the company’s record harvests of 400,000 lbs of clams per month from March through June even more notable.
While recognizing the staff’s tremendous work, Dewey also acknowledged such record volume would not have been achieved were it
not for mechanized harvest. “Taylor’s have built a few harvesting machines over the past decade and they have allowed for very efficient harvest,” he says.
Gains – as well as losses – were made at the company’s downstream operations. At two of its four oyster bars in Washington State, revenues are back to pre-COVID levels despite a number of pandemic-related mandates by Governor Inslee, which restricted seating capacity to 50 percent, he says.
But staff shortage has forced the company to put on hold the reopening of its oyster bar located across the street from the touristy Seattle Center and the Space Needle in Seattle. He says another oyster bar, located in Bellevue, WA, will shut down permanently.
Dewey is nonetheless optimistic about the rest of the year, noting that Americans are eating more seafood at home as an offshoot of the shutdown of restaurants.
“It has been a challenging year, but, like a
“Not only is it hard to source labour at the moment, but our hiring costs per head have jumped considerably. There are no takers at the minimum wage set by Washington state or the City of Tacoma.”
phoenix rising, our company operations are beginning to shine again. Over the past three months, we have seen our production and sales volumes achieve similar levels as 2016 and 2017, our peak revenue years,” he says.
Big or small farms alike are reporting staff shortage. At Alaska Shellfish Farms in Halibut Cove, AK, things are picking up but labor is scarce, says owner Weatherly Bates.
“We haven’t been able to find rehires,” says Bates, who was forced her to let go of her three workers in March 2020.
The small business, located in a remote part of Alaska, saw sales “skyrocket” during unprecedented heat wave this past summer along the pacific – from British Columbia to Baja – that prompted the closures of farms in those areas.
“The heat waves have been causing major disruption making everyone need oysters from us. We can’t keep up. Restaurant sales are up for us in a big way due to oyster shortages and climate-related closures. It was the first time we have had to turn down customers in our career,” she says.
“It seems like climate disruption, increasing temperatures, will be a main driver for our sales in the future (summer months) with warm water issues shutting so many growers,” she adds.
With sales to restaurants reviving, Bates says she and her husband have stopped online retail sales but they are maintaining a selfserve farm stand.
The shortage of skilled manpower is a reality seen elsewhere in the country. The general manager of WA-based Troutlodge noted the economic pressures caused by staff shortages.
“Not only is it hard to source labour at the moment, but our hiring costs per head have jumped considerably. There are no takers at the minimum wage set by Washington state or the City of Tacoma,” says Keith Drynan, who is also the VP of the Northwest Aquaculture Alliance (NWAA).
“On top of it being hard to recruit, we have had to continue with the precedent of ‘Hero pay’ where we have been paying crew members extra to recognize their hard work when we are short of a labour resource as well as to stop them leaving to draw extra unemployment benefits.”
Lori Steele, executive director of the West Coast Seafood Processors Association, says the association’s membership are facing similar struggles, noting that generous unemployment benefits are hard to compete with.
“We’re competing with the government in terms of trying to get people back to work – from the Cares Act and the Coronavirus Response Act – people saw a lot of unemployment benefits distributed federally and by the states.
“I looked at the unemployment benefits in
the State of Oregon, and just as an extreme example, I did the math and currently if you’re on the high side of the unemployment benefits in the state, you can make close to a thousand dollars a week on unemployment, which is $49,000 dollars a year. That is very difficult for us to compete,” Stelle says during a webinar last summer on US Seafood Policy hosted by Undercurrent News.
Across the border, the employment insurance system was also blamed in the Canadian province of New Brunswick, when only one of dozens of seafood processing workers laid off by Mowi took the job offers for similar roles at Cooke Aquaculture’s processing plant next door. Mowi let go about 40 workers in March 2020 as part of the restructuring of the operations of Mowi Canada East in the region (see cover story, next page).
“I think there is a sentiment across New Brunswick, not just in our operation but from other manufacturing and processing operations, that some of those benefits may be keeping people out of the workforce,” Joel Richardson, Cooke Aquaculture Pacific’s VP of Public Relations, was quoted as saying by CBC News.
A New Brunswick hatchery meanwhile was grateful for the federal government’s
Self-serve oyster outlet of Alaska Shellfish Farms in Halibut Cove, AK. The farm has maintained the outlet but has ended online sales now that restaurant orders are back
PHOTO: WEATHERLY BATES
wage subsidy program which it says was “really critical” in helping support employees during the pandemic.
“We managed to avoid any layoffs or reduction in hours/wages despite a massive
decline in sales, and everyone is really grateful that we didn’t have to make those sorts of decisions on top of all of the others stresses brought on by the pandemic,” says Martin Mallet, hatchery manager.
He says it was crucial that seed production at L’Étang Ruisseau Bar continued because it supplies 90 percent of the hatchery business in the province. “Due to our long growing cycle (three to five years), cutting back on seed would have long-term repercussions on farm productivity, and growers were well aware of this,” says Mallet.
Around the country, the entire restaurant industry has reported struggles in rebuilding the workforce. With seafood eaten mostly in restaurant settings, the scramble to find workers could have ripple effect in the long term on seafood farmers. This puts job seekers in the driver’s seat, acknowledged Stanley Kwok, assistant general manager at seafood distributor Blundell Seafood in British Columbia.
“I think people’s mentality has changed,” he observes. “Some people are still collecting unemployment benefits, and alternatively, some people like the younger generation are willing to change to a different job just for a dollar more.”
Mowi Canada East hits reset in Atlantic Canada
New managing director sees good opportunity to significantly grow in the region
BY LIZA MAYER
Mowi has restructured its business in Atlantic Canada after a rough start in the territory it considers the “ideal launch pad” into two of the world’s best salmon markets: eastern Canada and the northeastern United States.
Mowi ASA of Norway entered the region in 2017 with the acquisition of Gray Aqua Group and Northern Harvest, two family-owned concerns with fish farming licenses in Newfoundland and New Brunswick. But its first year of operations as Mowi Canada East was tainted by a climate-induced massive mortality event in 2019 that led to a reckoning of how such events are reported by industry to government and a reinforcement of the company’s mitigation measures in cases of extreme weather.
With the appointment of industry veteran Alan Cook as managing director in October 2020, the company entered a phase of self-reflection and restructuring in order to get it back on a growth path.
Mowi Americas COO Fernando Villaroel, in a presentation to investors in March, acknowledged that the initial development plan for the eastern Canada unit was “too ambitious in terms of growth pace.” He said the execution of the plan has now been changed to take into consideration the unique challenges in salmon farming in the region, particularly in Newfoundland.
An intervention Cook’s first step in transforming the unit was to make a detailed assessment of the operation’s systems and structures.
“The company went through a phase of really rapid development in 2018, 19 and 20. And anytime you have a major issue in salmon farming like the company had in 2019, it takes years for those sorts of repercussions to roll through the system.
“The emphasis since I joined in September has really been to sort of slow down and consolidate those changes and get ourselves into
position where we have a stable operating system that everybody understands, and that we have solid performance around everything: feeding, harvesting, processing, freshwater,” says Cook.
He says most of the effort has been to pay attention to cost of production and biological performance, including Infectious salmon anaemia virus (ISAv), which according to Villaroel has caused the unit to fall behind growth targets. The COO, who is also the managing director of Mowi Chile, is confident that a “recipe” to battle ISAv already exists and will be implemented to help manage the issue.
Sea lice, however, still remains the most critical biological challenge for the business unit. Cook says this summer of 2021 is the first time that the company has the full complement of sea lice control systems in place.
“We have a thermolicer and two hydrolicers, and we’re trialling freshwater lice treatments. This summer is a great opportunity for us to demonstrate effective sea lice control. Historically, pre-Mowi, the company would have relied on in-feed therapeutics. So these mechanical sea lice removal systems are pretty new to a lot of our teams and to Newfoundland. So we’re really focused this year on making those systems work well.”
To further set the stage for growth, Cook also had to restructure the New Brunswick operations. “We’ve changed the way we’re processing fish on the east coast and that has resulted in some reduction in workforce in New Brunswick. We’ve made a decision to process and ship directly from Newfoundland and we’ve contracted out our harvest volumes in New Brunswick,” he says.
Significant opportunities
Mowi Canada East operates 40 licenses in Atlantic Canada, of which 29 are in Newfoundland, while the rest are in New Brunswick and Prince
Salmon farming exec Alan Cook returns to Canada from New Zealand to lead Mowi’s next chapter in Atlantic Canada. He started his aquaculture career with Mowi in BC in 1998 PHOTO: ALAN COOK
Mowi’s ‘ambitious’ growth strategy for its eastern Canada unit was revised recently to make allowances for the unique challenges in salmon farming in the region, particularly in Newfoundland. PHOTO: MOWI
Edward Island. According to Villaroel, the strategy this year is to reach a stable production of 25,000 tons per year.
In its 2020 Annual Report, the parent company underscored the exceptional opportunity for growth in the region. “Mowi has many unused licenses (in eastern Canada) and there is a significant potential for growth in the coming years.”
Addressing biological issues through new farming technologies, purchasing additional capacity and undertaking M&A activities are ways to grow volumes in the region, it said.
In Newfoundland, the additional production capacity will come both from existing facilities and new farms being planned to open over the next few years, says Cook.
“We’re putting in two new farms next year and then one each in the following year: so in 2022 we’ll put in two farms, in 2023 another farm and in 2024, we’ll put in another farm. We’re growing in southern Newfoundland. We’re investing in growing there. And then we have in our traditional sites where we have quite a number of farms that we can put to use as well. So there is good opportunity to significantly increase our production in Newfoundland.”
That’s how it’s supposed to work, but keeping goals and targets on track in Newfoundland’s very challenging natural environment is not, by any measure, an easy task, suggests Cook, who sharpened his expertise in salmon farming jurisdictions like Chile, New Zealand and British Columbia.
A whole new ball game
He says extreme temperatures make faming in Newfoundland a whole new ball game. “You cannot just waltz in and think that everything you knew about farming salmon in another place is going to serve you well
in Newfoundland. If you look at Chile for example, in most of the farming areas of Chile the temperature goes between 8°C in the winter to a high of 14°C in the summer, which is a perfect range for salmon.
“Newfoundland has a very cold long winter and a very warm short summer. We have months where the water can be between 0°C and 1°C and then months in the summer when it can be 17-18°C.
“You can only put smolts in the water for a couple of months. All your sea lice treatment activities are consolidated to six months a year. The other six months of the year, that equipment is doing nothing and costing you money. Through the winter, the logistics of harvesting and processing and transporting fish to market
become extremely challenging because of ferry linkages, roads, winter weather etc. It’s very remote, the climate is intense. It requires a different approach, a different skill set to most other places that I’ve farmed.
Notwithstanding these challenges, Mowi remains committed to growing the aquaculture industry in Newfoundland, which COO Villaroel singled out as “one of the few farming regions with a significant potential for growth.”
A compelling reason is proximity to the northeast region of North America, home to 80 million people. “We’re positioned next to one of the best salmon markets in the world: eastern Canada and the northeastern US. Come to think of it, Norwegians and Scottish producers fly salmon into the US. So we have an enormous transportation advantage compared to them. We’re only two-days transport from most of those customers and they’re willing to pay a premium for fresh farmed salmon,” says Cook.
He acknowledged the provincial government, which is the primary regulator for the industry in Newfoundland, is very supportive in developing a very strong salmon farming community. “We’re in one of the few regions in the world that’s really embracing salmon aquaculture as significant opportunity for growth,” he says.
“Growth in the salmon farming world is hard to come by and we have a fairly rare opportunity to make the most of it once we’ve demonstrated stable biological results. Then the appetite for growth in Newfoundland will really open up.”
Measure
Results Beyond Expectation
Two questions will hound RAS producers in the foreseeable future
BY LUCI HART
Land-based aquaculture responds beautifully as complement to conventional production methods but producers in this emerging sector should be ready to answer concerns about energy use and fish density.
So said Viggo Halseth, chief innovation officer at animal nutrition and aquafeed specialist Nutreco, in a recent industry panel hosted by IntraFish.
While land-based aquaculture reduces stress on the planet because of its proximity to market, negates the need for sea lice treatments and does not build up feces or feeds in downstream ecosystems, other questions from the perspective of animal welfare and energy use will be imminent because of consumers’ sharpened focus on sustainability, Halseth suggested.
Producers, whether big or small, will be asked what kind of energy they use to power their operations, as well as the stocking densities in the tanks, he said.
“Density is a very subjective measure, and fish in the wild can have very high density voluntarily. (But in aquaculture) people will look at 70 or 80 kilos of fish per cubic meter as something negative without really having an objective measure of that.
“There’s lot of sustainability items linked to farming and net pen farming, and no alternative will be better in absolutely every case, but I think (the land-based sector) will be challenged with these two questions,” he said.
Netherlands-based Nutreco recently invested in the RAS sector via a stake in landbased yellowtail producer Kingfish Zeeland in the Netherlands and in Nordic Aqua Partners’ RAS salmon farm in China.
Justin Henry, chief technology officer with the Norway-based West Coast Salmon, agrees the sustainability message will be a key factor driving the industry forward.
“It’s super valuable and a focus for West Coast Salmon for sure. We replace environmental risk – diseases, plankton, storms, jellyfish and so on – with human error and
mechanical-failure risk, but those things we can develop and improve on and thereby improve animal welfare in production.”
West Coast Salmon plans to build a RAS facility in Nevada designed to produce up to 50,000 metric tons of Atlantic salmon for the US West Coast market.
Still on the sector’s challenges, Johan Fredrik Gjesdal, chief of land-based aquaculture at global aquaculture supplier Akva Group, said the execution of RAS projects, not access to capital, remains the biggest challenge because many new entrants do not necessarily have the
Let’s Tie One on Together in 2021 Flag Tie Markers
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Production hall at AquaMaof’s R&D training center in Poland. The
will ask probing questions about energy use and fish density in RAS operations in the foreseeable future, says an expert
expertise vital to scaling up this emerging sector.
“That’s just the way it’s going to be because this segment is drawing newcomers. Over time people will learn, and this industry will attract talent…. The projects that are succeeding [are the ones that] have put together a strong team,” he said.
Indeed, money is flowing into this sector.
According to Linn Cathrin Slettedal, senior manager, primary market at Oslo Bors, 14 companies have started to list on the seafood exchange in the last one and a half years alone (Atlantic Sapphire listed in 2018). Activity
remains high, with Norwegian land-based farmer Salmon Evolution planning a public share listing on the Oslo main stock exchange in 3Q 2021.
It’s important to remember that securing the financing is just one of the steps to success; execution is actually the biggest factor, according to Yoav Dagan, one of the founders of Israel-based AquaMaof Aquaculture Technologies.
“People think that finding the money is the challenge, but actually the execution side is the challenge,” said Dagan, noting that there is growing awareness of this factor and newer start-ups are better at performing risk analysis and doing their due diligence to understand the risks and pitfalls ahead of them.
“In the past, the systems were too small, and production people did not have enough know-how,” said Dagan. “Today it’s a different ball game. You have very educated people, you have good financing methods, and you have educated investors.”
Another important factor to industry success is finding the right systems and technologies to achieve stable yields. For that reason, Akva, which is developing feeding systems specifically for larger fish, is hoping to help its customers improve their operation systems.
Said Gjesdal: “We need to make production more repeatable and predictable to reduce operational risk. We still see that some farmers are suffering with too low productivity. We have not crossed the finish line, and we’re working to make sure the technology fits the purpose.”
All this being said, no one thinks landbased farms will take the place of offshore aquaculture and open nets any time soon. For Nutreco’s Halseth, it is more likely to develop and grow in parallel.
“There is room for land-based aquaculture, but it will need to be absolutely competitive on price and cost, not only on sustainability, to really transition from the traditional methods,” he said.
AquaMaof’s Dagan agrees and adds that current production forecasts are over-optimistic.
“RAS systems are far from taking over traditional farming. As I’ve mentioned, the challenge is execution. It’s important to take your time as people get up to speed on their know-how.”
Which is to say, more of the fish ending up on your plate will eventually be raised on land, but the sector will need to continue wrestling with growing pains for the foreseeable future.
PHOTO: AQUAMAOF
Promises, failures and excuses
Recirculation Aquaculture System (RAS) operations for salmon are still getting a lot of airtime and a substantial amount of investment. Yet profitability remains elusive. The primary excuse for lack of profitability is that this sector is in
startup phase and there are still some kinks to be ironed out. Fair enough. But after 10 years of the current round of startups continuing to tread water and about 25 years since the first commercial attempts at RAS for salmon growout, the excuses are starting to wear thin.
For many years it has been difficult to evaluate the success, or lack thereof, of RAS operations because of the lack of public financial reporting. Many companies came and went but the reasons for the failures of these companies were seldom made public.
With the recent listing of companies on public stock exchanges, the promises, the failures and the excuses are now very public. This essay will look into these.
Much of the data here is from Atlantic Sapphire for a variety of reasons: they have the most data available in the public domain; they are the largest public RAS company; and they’re listed for the longest period. There’s also lot of information made public in the run up to initial financing and several times since. For example, available information about their business plan is facilitating a comparison between what was being promised to investors and what has actually occurred.
Reasonably reliable data is available from annual report filings that date back to 2018. The bulk of the analysis presented here is for 2018, 2019 and 2020. It is not perfect because of a few variations in the reported metrics, necessitating some assumptions and guess work to be made in the analysis, but consistent enough to be enlightening.
Catastrophic losses
Massive fish die-offs have plagued many RAS startups, including Atlantic Sapphire (Table 1). Catastrophic fish mortality events result
in significant loss of income both from the biomass lost during the event and the loss of future biomass gains – dead fish don’t grow. This is particularly severe for RAS, where fixed costs are already very high.
Salmon RAS operations have been plagued by early maturation, off-flavour, and slow growth rates. These problems result in both a higher cost of production and a lower selling price, dramatically affecting profitability and cash flow.
The biological and financial performance of the Miami, Florida facility, stated in Atlantic Sapphire’s presentation dated 24 April 2018, fell short of expectations during the years 2018, 2019, and 2020 (Table 2). Harvest was far below what was forecast, and the financial losses were much greater than predicted. From 2018 to 2020 the production (HOG tonnes) fell short by 8,742 tonnes and the cumulative EBITDA for this period was $105,065,000 below expectations.
Bitter truth
Even for a company the size of Atlantic Sapphire, these are significant numbers. These figures clearly illustrate that the many threats to the business outlined in the Atlantic Sapphire listing Prospectus are very real and need to be taken seriously.
These problems will need to be solved and the threats need to be greatly diminished before salmon RAS can be considered a safe financial investment. Excuses are not a substitute for operational and financial performance.
Large-scale, full growout salmon RAS is new and a very risky and complicated proposition. Atlantic Sapphire has provided the usual litany of reasons for their underperformance: disease, construction issues, lack of skilled personnel, design flaws, slow growth rates, early maturity, product quality issues, market volatility and catastrophic losses. Atlantic Sapphire has also suggested that most of these problems have been solved as a result their experiences in their Danish facility, which has been operational for the past 10 years. Apparently, this is not the case.
Salmon RAS is not the only RAS system experiencing difficulties. The recent complete collapse of the shrimp RAS operations of Chinabased Sino Agro, which saw cumulative losses of more than $100 million, is another example of the precarious nature of these operations. The Sino Agro story has haunting similarities to the problems being encountered in salmon RAS operations. It was a very large investment based on mega claims. It claimed it would
Next Generation Spawning
RAS VIEWPOINT BY BRAD HICKS
Denmark July 11, 2021 400 tonnes HOG Water quality (human error) TABLE 1 LIST OF
Location Date Severity Cause
Denmark 2012 unknown Disease (furunculosis)
Denmark July 2, 2017 250 tonnes Water quality (hydrogen sulfide)
Denmark February 29, 2020 227,000 fish Water quality (nitrogen super saturation)
Florida July 28, 2020 400 tonnes HOG1 Associated with construction
Florida March 23, 2021 500 tonnes HOG Design flaw
1 HOG Head-On-Gutted, approximately 83% of live
These
problems will need to be solved and the threats need to be greatly diminished before salmon RAS can be considered a safe financial investment. Excuses are not a substitute for operational and financial performance.
1 Tonages were reported as either tonnes or tons. Tons were converted to tonnes for this purpose.
2 EBITDA in USD
produce 300,000 tonnes of RAS shrimp per year. However, from the beginning, there were problems with facilities and water quality and lack of qualified staff, resulting in significant cost overruns, poor financial performance and limited cash flow.
There are now several public RAS companies, which means there will be access to information on production and financial performance of these operations. But as most of these companies are very recent listings and are not yet in the production, it is still too early to review their financial information.
Some, much smaller RAS systems, seem to be meeting their early performance metrics. An example is The King Fish Company, which raises yellow tail in a RAS facility in the Netherlands. This company is still in the pre-profit stage of development, but it is meeting its production goals and has had no catastrophic events for the last three years.
But even for what appears to be a relatively successful start-up, the runway to positive cashflow and positive earnings is very long, and is likely to encounter some bumps along the way. Time will tell if this venture can be successful.
RAS as a system works fine. However, RAS systems have limitations. They have been used very successfully to raise salmon smolts, tilapia for the live market and for a few other specialty applications. But growing market-size Atlantic salmon profitably in RAS has been elusive. Hundreds of millions have been invested and yet the returns are scant at
best and very disappointing for the most part. How long will investors keep the faith? That remains to be seen.
A recent newsletter from Peritus Capital may be foreshadowing events. The newsletter begins with the statement that “RAS has become the ‘it’ investment in the seafood space”. It speaks about the investment being an Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) and sustainability investment but it does not qualify how RAS fits as an ESG investment other than to confirm that RAS is “imagined” to be and ESG investment. The article then goes on to ask whether investment interest in the sector is a fad. The author states empathically that it is not a fad, but quickly covers his bets: the capital markets can be fickle, he says.
If entrepreneurs do not fulfill the promises they’ve made and they go back to investors to get more investment dollars out of them, investors will depart. The question is, how patient are these investors? Will they tire of the excuses? After all, business failures only occur when capital investments and loan instruments run out before the company reaches positive cash flow. This can take years and result in massive cumulative losses. So far, Atlantic salmon RAS and shrimp RAS have racked up hundreds of millions of dollars in losses.
Political dogma
In Canada, the federal Liberal government has proposed that the open-net-pen salmon industry in British Columbia transition to
other forms of production methods, including RAS. Only a political party desperate to stay in power would even imagine such a destructive public policy. So far, salmon RAS has only proven itself to be unworkable. Before any transition to RAS systems becomes public policy, there needs to be strong indication that the systems can result in profitable outcomes. In the interim, public policy should focus on the use of RAS where it works: in the production of smolts, or in post-smolt production combined with open-net-pen farming.
If the government insists on the transition, it should support the development of salmon RAS and only implement a transition policy once salmon RAS has proven to be financially viable in BC. Then the transition should be a stepwise effort, maintaining jobs and economic activity in coastal communities during the transition process. To do otherwise will be the death knell for the many coastal communities and indigenous who rely on salmon net pen farming for their livelihoods.
has been working in the fish farming industry for over 40 years, has raised six species on a commercial basis and helped pioneer sablefish aquaculture. He was COO for various successful fish farming operations throughout Canada, the US and Chile, and VP of fish feed operations in Canada. Pertinent to this current discussion, Dr Hicks was responsible for the decision to install the first RAS smolt rearing facility in British Columbia in the mid-1990s. He holds degrees in fish and wildlife biology BSc, veterinary pathology MSc and veterinary medicine DVM.
Dr Brad Hicks
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Aquaculture’s deep push for nutrition innovation bodes well for ALTERNATIVE FEED
BY RUBY GONZALEZ
The growing production of alternative proteins and oils for fish feed attests to the growing market demand and a deepening understanding of climate change, but they will remain a small fraction of the market until there’s enough production available, according to a key player in the sector.
“We are talking about making changes in a nutrition system that has evolved over 10,000 years. And as fast as things are moving today, there’s still a tremendous number of plants
to build whether you’re Veramaris, Calysta or NovoNutrients, Innovafeed or others,” said David Tze, CEO of Sunnyvale, CA-based biotech firm NovoNutrients told participants in a webinar on feed alternatives hosted by Intrafish in April.
The growth of the alternative feed industry is dependent on production scale, he stressed. Mulling a scenario 10 years from now, Tze said the market share would remain on the low side.
“I’d say that we’re still looking at less than 10 percent for alternatives on the protein and
Protein flour from Silicon Valley’s NovoNutrients is made from waste CO2 emissions with the help of natural microbes and industrial biotech. Skretting is testing the feed material PHOTO: NOVONUTRIENTS
lipid side. That could be massive in dollar terms. But as a fraction in the maths, it is still going to be small.”
The increased investment in the sector seen in recent years bodes well for the sector, however.
Innovafeed CEO Clement Ray said investors are recognizing the role alternative proteins – such as insects – play in boosting the industry’s green credentials.
As it is, aquaculture already has the lowest carbon footprint in the animal protein industry. But innovations in feed that will reduce reliance on capture fisheries for feed ingredients will advance its sustainability further.
“The industry is growing very fast. The financial community has identified this strength. The reason why they are investing in alternative ingredients is because they believe in the growth of aquaculture. They are also aware of the fact that 50-60 percent of the value-add of aquaculture is coming from feed and 80 percent of aquaculture carbon footprint is coming from feed,” he said.
A “smart business model” has enabled the French biotechnology company to produce insect protein with a lower footprint than an existing model, said Ray. “Today, we have a much lower biodiversity path compared to some of the fishmeal (users) and we have half of carbon footprint compared to fishmeal.”
Following the construction of its first production site in Gouzeaucourt, France, in 2017, Innovafeed inaugurated in 2020 a second facility, in Nesle, France. This site is the world’s biggest of its kind, with a target capacity of 15,000 tons. Construction of a
third plant, a 60,000 ton-facility in Decatur, Illinois, is scheduled this year. The plan is to have 20 production sites by 2030.
Calysta, another player in the alternative protein market, produces a protein called FeedKind from “naturally occurring microbes found in soils worldwide using a natural fermentation process similar to making yeast.”
It is constructing its first world-scale plant in China, which it expects to be completed next year. Its Initial output of 20,000 tons will be increased by 80,000 tons in the second phase. The California-based biotech firm has smaller facilities already in operation in Memphis, Tennessee and in the UK.
Dutch-based firm Veramaris, which produces a namesake marine algae oil at its facility in Blair, Nebraska, said one ton of its algal oil provides as much EPA and DHA as 60 tons of forage fish.
The company has always maintained that the presence of EPA and DHA molecules in the Veramaris oil makes it “the only one capable of truly replacing fish oil” in aquaculture feed.
“EPA and DHA the are two of the most important nutrients in both animal and human health. Veramaris has innovated a solution to that,” said Ian Carr, Global Business Development Director.
California-based NovoNutrients produces alternative protein ingredients by utilizing CO2 emissions from industries. Such products — protein derived from cells of microorganisms such as yeast, fungi, algae, and bacteria — are known as single-cell proteins (SCPs).
Tze said the production of SCPs decouples the production of nutrition from both agriculture and fossil fuels.
“This is unique to this particular production of this single-cell protein. And that’s important because it creates a totally distinct cross-structure that is based on emissions and, ultimately, renewable energy to generate hydrogen, which is the chemical energy for the fermentation.”
In September 2020, NovoNutrients shipped the first product sample of its bacterial protein meal to Skretting so the aquaculture feed manufacturer could test whether it has what it takes to go commercial. “The explicit goal is striking a procurement contract through which Skretting would commit to purchases of NovoNutrients’ feed ingredients,” the two companies said in a statement.
Robert van den Breemer, procurement director at Skretting, said the biggest challenge for startups like NovoNutrients is in scaling up production so that they achieve a competitive price. He said Skrettting’s involvement will help speed up NovoNutrients’ path to large-scale manufacturing.
“We know that financing first-of-a-kind ingredient factories is hard for start-ups and,
via the range of different agreements we can apply, we hope to break that limiting cycle and signal to the world which innovators we think have what it takes to go commercial and get big,” said van den Breemer.
Land and water use
While each type of alternative protein has its own merits, Calysta president and CEO Alan Shaw believes that the impact of the production processes of these alternative proteins on land use and water use may be a more important metric in grading its sustainability.
“Land and water use is way more important than just carbon footprint,” Shaw said, adding that one metric ton of FeedKind can replace a ton of soy protein, a widely used protein alternative to fishmeal.
To illustrate the sustainability of producing FeedKind versus soy protein, Shaw said: “Our world-scale plant will produce 100,000 MT of FeedKind a year. If it was soy protein, the land needed to produce an equivalent amount of protein would be the size of Chicago. Yet our 100MT-FeedKind plant can sit on six football fields.”
– With files from Liza Mayer
The massive capital being poured into the alternative feed segment speaks to investors’ belief in the growth of aquaculture, said an expert PHOTO: COLE MUNRO
The search for RAS-friendly fish feed
BY NESTOR ARELLANO
After years of working as a fish health manager, Sasha Dyer no longer minds when the occasional hungry barramundi tries to snap a bite at her as she checks them out in their recirculating aquaculture system (RAS) habitat. Her mind is preoccupied with the quality of feed and their feed intake. Her unwavering focus is understandable.
“The Achilles heel of aquaculture is the feed,” Bill Martin, founder and president of land-based tilapia producer Blue Ridge Aquaculture in Virginia, once told this publication. “We pay twice for our feed in recirculating aquaculture: once when you put it in the tank, and again when you take it out, which is as expensive as when you put it in.”
Dyer, of Great Falls Aquaculture in Thunder Falls, Massachusetts, says finding a consistent supply of high-quality fish feed is critical, no matter the species being raised. Having the necessary nutrients for fish health and growth is a given, but feeding fish in RAS environments has its own peculiarities.
For instance, while high feeding rates may result in growth, they can also result in higher fecal discharge – a bad thing in aquaculture generally, but especially bad in closed containment aquaculture.
“Fish feed for RAS has to have high digestibility characteristics,” says Dyer. “Higher digestibility results in better protein retention; it prevents bloating and reduces fecal discharge.”
It’s essential that CO 2 and ammonium are kept at acceptable levels, she says. “High CO 2 levels slow down the metabolism of fish. Feces can literally rot inside them and this slowly kills them.”
Filtration systems are critical to RAS environments because they keep the water in the tanks clean and properly oxygenated and filter out the substances such as CO 2 and ammonium, according to Pekka Marttinen entrepreneur and consultant at RAS-Consulting.
Apart from providing the specie-appropriate protein levels, amino acid, fatty acids and energy levels, RAS feed needs to have physical integrity because feed pellets that crumble tend to foul up the filtration system.
“High levels of solids in the water can block mechanical filters,” says Marttinen. “When this happens, biofilters will eventually become compromised.”
Besides, the so-called feed dust from these pellets is not consumed by the fish, but it can get stuck in their gills and cause irritations.
Feeding the fish and the RAS system
The modern RAS technology has been in use for more than 40 years now, but the challenges mentioned by Dyer and Marttinen remain.
The development of RAS-specific fish feed by major animal feed producers started much later. Aquaculture feed producer Skretting, a subsidiary of Netherlands-based Nutreco, started developing RAS feed in 2005 and launched its first commercial feed for RAS in 2009.
“Feed is the common denominator for RAS operation efficiency KPIs (key performance indicators),” notes Saravanan Subramanian, global product manager for Skretting. “In RAS, you are not only feeding the fish but the system as well.”
Bram Meersman, fish veterinarian at global fish nutrition company Alltech Coppens, measuring and explaining water quality to customers. PHOTO: ALLTECH COPPENS
The involvement of big names in animal feed, such as Cargill and InnovaFeed, signals a vote of confidence in the use of novel ingredients, such as black soldier fly, as feed ingredients
(L-R) Skretting’s Saravanan Subramanian, global product manager, and Stuart Fyfe, operations team leader. The company’s “RC” range of RAS feed reduces the impact of indirect waste into RAS by improving faecal stability
PHOTO: SKRETTING
He says the quantity and quality of the feed influences almost all operational aspects in RAS.
Bram Meersman, aquatic veterinarian for Alltech Coppens, a global producer of aquaculture nutrition solutions, says that “a better feed conversion ratio (FCR) and consistent feed quality is crucial for stable and efficient operation to ensure an optimal water quality for fish.”
“The biofilter is really the heart of the RAS entity and it needs to be fed continuously with the right amount of ammonium to break down nitrite, which then has to be broken down to nitrate,” he adds.
Ammonium is a waste product expelled by fish. In the water, ammonium turns into ammonia, which is toxic to fish. Biofilters contain bacteria than break down ammonia into nitrite. Nitrite is further broken down into nitrate which is less toxic to fish.
As RAS technology developed over the years, the feed industry also evolved to develop feeds that are easily digestible, result in less feces or feces that are easily filtered out of the system, Meersman explains.
“The choice of raw materials, feed additives used and also the specific ratios of raw materials used in RAS feeds have been investigated thoroughly and optimized in recent years,” he says.
At Skretting, a range of RAS feed, called “RC” was developed to lessen the impact of indirect waste in RAS operations by improving faecal stability. RCX, the next generation of the RC range, takes the physical quality of the feed a step further by making sure Skretting’s global network of feed manufacturing facilities follow the strict quality parameters developed by
the company in Stavanger, Norway. Skretting’s facility in St Andrews, NB, Canada is its first facility to be “RCX-certified.”
Sustainability
Sustainability has come into sharper focus in recent years across industries.
Norway-based Atlantic Sapphire, the largest RAS salmon producer worldwide, plans its facility in Miami, Florida to be “fully out of the ocean” in two to three years, meaning that it will be using alternative feeds that are not dependent on fishmeal or fish oil.
Subramanian expects this to become a trend. Skretting is now engaging suppliers of novel ingredients – such as microbial proteins from fermentation technology, algal oils, and insect meals – to help them scale up production.
Last year, Skretting Italy has launched an aquaculture feed product which the company touts as carbon neutral. The company says its Feed4Future product is the first low-impact feed available to fish farmers in Italy. The company uses raw materials and high-quality by-products sourced from the food industry that don’t compete with human consumption. This enables a Feed4Future diet to provide 10-percent lower carbon footprint than standard diets, with the remaining CO2 emissions compensated for by carbon credits.
At Alltech Coppens, life cycle assessments (LCA) are used to gauge feed ingredients’ environmental impact. It also adapts greener production practices, including in the handling of by-products and waste, as well as land use so Alltech meets sustainability requirements and certifications.
The company has cut its FIFO (fish-infish-out) factor to a level that is lower that the industry average, says Meersman. The FIFO ratio measures the amount of fish meal and fish oil that is used to produce one weight equivalent of farmed fish back to wild fish weight equivalents.
Tomorrow’s fish feed
Meersman expects alternative ingredients devoid of fishmeal and fish oils to expand their share of the feed ingredients market over the next few years.
“Insect meal is one of them, but also bacterial meals (single-cell proteins). Other unexplored leftover streams of established chemical, food, and beer products will be considered to be put into good use instead of being just waste,” he says.
In 2019, two of the world’s leading names in animal nutrition – Cargill and InnovaFeed – signed a landmark deal that confirms insects have become a viable protein source for sustainable fish feed. InnovaFeed, a French biotech company that develops feed ingredients derived from insects, says that by feeding insect meal to animals, each 10,000-ton-production unit saves 25,000 tons of CO2 emissions per year.
Sustainability, however, also comes at a price.
“We can produce the most sustainable products, using local resources and eliminating resources that are under pressure. Eventually, the end consumer still needs to be willing to pay the extra price for sustainability considerations taken during the process of production,” says Meersman.
PHOTO: CARGILL
Remote audit will remain a vital tool in certification post-COVID
Auditors discuss how farms can help make
the process more efficient
BY LUCI HART
More than a year since COVID-19 curtailed global travel, experts at a recent SeafoodSource panel say remote audits has become an important tool in the certification toolbox –and it could grow even more valuable in the months ahead.
“We have learned a lot of things due to COVID, including the realization that we do not always need to travel,” says Antonio Hervás, program manager for Assurance Service International (ASI), which offers MSC and ASC accreditations. “We learned that we could reduce our [environmental] footprint. We can be greener.”
ASI was able to quickly pivot from on-site audits to remote audits when the pandemic started, in part because the company was already reworking its approach to remote audits as early as 2019. When COVID-19 prompted travel bans in many countries, ASI started offering remote auditing to selected locations — primarily countries with low to medium risk. The company later extended
remote audits to higher-risk countries, although only for surveillance audits and recertifications.
To date, about 30 percent of ASI’s audits have been conducted remotely, either fully remote or partially. “There was a lot of remote auditing during the past year, although mainly in certain countries and species such as salmon in Canada, Chile Norway, and the United Kingdom, and shrimp in Honduras and India,” says Efrain Calderon, ASI’s lead assessor for ASC farm and chain of custody (COC) certification.
Best Aquaculture Practices, which has certified close to 3,000 facilities in 39 countries, also pivoted to doing some audits remotely and saw significant time savings in the process.
“A lot of time is wasted on an onsite audit with the auditor asking for what they want to see,” explains Gregory Brown, senior vice president, operations and strategic development at BAP. “Remote auditing forced us to help the facilities to find, curate and provide
“We have learned a lot of things due to COVID, including the realization that we do not always need to travel. We learned that we could reduce our [environmental] footprint. We can be greener.”
the documentary evidence quickly to the auditors. Everybody ends up much more focused in the audit.”
Efficiency isn’t the only benefit. “The first thing that farmers pointed out to us immediately was the cost — we were amazed that we were reducing about 30 percent of our cost with remote audit,” says ASI’s Calderon.
However, not all aspects of the certification process lend themselves to remote audits. Libby Woodhatch, executive chairman at MarinTrust Ltd, which certifies fish processing plants, warns that complex details may not always be captured via Zoom.
“The fish-assessment component of our standard is much easier because so much of it is done by looking at your scientific documentation,” Woodhatch observes. “There are components we can capture through this screen sharing and doing exactly as they
Walking around the farm to see the entire operation is something that auditors miss, but they say remote audit has benefits too PHOTO: BCSFA
would do inside the plant, but it’s the walking around, seeing your operation and having those other conversations that we’re missing.”
Panel members agreed that assessing a plant or farm’s social accountability — typically done through staff interviews — may be more easily done in person. Setting up Zoom interviews can be challenging for larger operations with many workers, or in offices where meeting facilities are limited.
However, it’s not an insurmountable hurdle. “The trick is to figure out how to make the interview process robust by using the ICT tools that you have,” says Brown. One way is to empty out a room of all people except for the IT person facilitating the interview, and the worker. The worker is also asked to sit with their back to the door to protect their identity and discourage unwanted visitors.
The documentary evidence provided by a company can also hold clues to its corporate accountability, says Brown.
“If there’s gaps in the documentary evidence, that’s a good indication of where the problems may be. The auditor’s responsibility is to arm themself with as much pre-knowledge of the situation so that when they get in that interview, they can ask the appropriate questions that can follow those audit trails.”
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Brown at BAP emphasizes the importance of using the right communication tools to make remote audits as effective as they can be.
“The pathway is going to be how do we make the most efficient use of the communication tools that we have. In a way, the old way of auditing was a bit antiquated. The auditor would arrive having done a modicum of pre-work. Because of remote audits, we found that the key to a good audit is doing the prep work well.”
Notwithstanding some of the drawbacks and growing pains, most in the industry believe partial or fully remote audits are here to stay.
“I don’t think we’re going to go back to how it was,” says MarineTrust’s Woodhatch. “I think we’ll end up with some sort of blended model, where you can do particularly surveillance audit remotely, but [still have] in person audit as well.”
Calderon and Brown agree, and Brown added: “It’ll probably end up some sort of a blended [process]. Maybe it’ll be more documentary evidence provided upfront before the audit rather than the auditor just walking in and saying, ‘Show me your paperwork.’ That’s going to create a more efficient world.”
Oysters for all
A grower in North Carolina makes it his mission to democratize access to his oysters
BY MATT JONES
Ryan Bethea is making it easy for people to have access to his harvest.
The owner of Oysters Carolina spends a significant time every week driving around North Carolina to bring his product to the people – free delivery with no minimum order. That’s because as much as Oysters Carolina is a business, it’s also designed to benefit the community.
“When we started this, we said we wanted to provide fresh North Carolina seafood for all North Carolinians,” says Bethea. “That’s going to include elderly folks, people with low socio-economic
status, folks that live in food deserts, people that don’t have traditional access to seafood. An 80-year-old woman in, let’s say a place like Archdale, North Carolina in the middle western part of the state, might not have transportation or might not necessarily be able to drive anymore, she still deserves the same access to fresh seafood as everybody else, in my opinion.”
Imagining the possibilities
The trajectory of Bethea’s life changed one evening in 2011
Significant drying time is crucial to combatting biofouling in the cages due to the high salinity of the water in the area
article about how North Carolina’s oyster industry had all the elements needed to take off, but no one was really pursuing it.
Bethea says he was so excited by the possibilities, he had a hard time sleeping that night.
“We’ve got a very healthy fishery because our waters are so pristine,” says Bethea. “A lot of that is due to the geography of the water. And there’s not a lot of development in the area because it’s so hard to navigate. Most of our seafood either gets shipped up to the northeast or down to the Gulf. But we want our seafood to stay in North Carolina in the hands of North Carolinians.”
Oysters Carolina has now been operating for six years on a lease off Harker’s Island. Bethea uses
bottom cages, some with bags, some without. Those without bags are used as holding cages, essentially like trays. Bethea says the 5.25-acre lease he operates on is intertidal, a rarity in North Carolina. It allows him and his lone staff to use bottom cages and still give the oysters some drying time.
“We count oysters all week and get everything ready,” says Bethea. “Then Friday morning we go out and harvest them. I take pictures and videos and text them to our customers and then we deliver them. On average, we drive about 51,000 miles a year. I average about 13 or 14 hours a day on Fridays driving, and about 10 on Saturdays. There’s people that are eight-hours away from the coast.”
Harvest from Oysters Carolina
Ryan Bethea, owner of Oysters Carolina, wants every North Carolinian to have the same access to fresh seafood
In addition to farmed oysters, the company also sells wild-caught shrimp, scallops, clams and fish.
The water where the oysters are raised have high salinity –31-33 ppt, which is conducive to biofouling, says Bethea. Drying is therefore particularly important, and the top and bottom bags are flipped almost every time the oysters are handled to allow for even drying. He is also very diligent about power-washing.
“Ridiculous”
Many people in the area don’t understand Bethea’s community-focused business model because it’s unusual. Bethea says there are those who think what he’s doing is “ridiculous,” some offer unsolicited advice on how to run his business. The bolder ones even ask to see his financial figures.
“People get really brazen about it,” he says. “A lot of people call me just to challenge it. But we do it for the folks that can’t afford it. We could be charging folks a lot more, especially for the service. There’s literally nobody that harvests oysters and then distributes them to people across the entire state for free. To get an oyster eight hours away, that was just in the water eight hours ago, is really remarkable and something we’re really
proud of. We only work with one restaurant, everything else goes direct to the people.”
Difficult, but rewarding
Driving long hours around the state to deliver product is challenging, admits Bethea, but it is also rewarding.
“Sometimes, you don’t want to drive another two hours one way and two hours back to break even,” he says. “But when you show up, it makes it all worth it,
how happy they are, how grateful they are. They know what we do, that it’s really challenging. And they know that’s their only option and they’re really grateful. ”
He offers farm tours. For $75, visitors can explore the farm and eat all the oysters they want. Later this year, he plans to unveil a land-based operation which he hopes will incorporate educational elements as well. Bethea hopes that he can demonstrate to local students that one have
to look far for opportunities. Oyster farming is one of those opportunities where one can contribute economically and socially, Bethea stressed.
“We want to expose people to it,” he says. “We’re bringing them on the water, showing them what we do, giving them food, showing them something that we’ve actually grown with our own hands, that’s also filtering our water and helping our state environmentally. It’s so many things.”
FLOATERS & SINKERS BY JOHN NICKUM
Cages in the Commons
Arguments against aquaculture are based fundamentally on some people’s belief that the shores and adjacent waters abutting their property are “theirs.”
Rearing fish in cages suspended in near-shore ocean water, ponds, reservoirs or lakes is a well-established and effective aquaculture system. Feed efficiency is as good as, or even better than that obtained in ponds or other open systems. Growth and physical condition of the fish are relatively easy to monitor in most cage systems. Despite the benefits of aquaculture, anti-farming advocates often single out “cage culture.” The advantages of production in cage systems seem obvious to its supporters; so why is there seemingly endless controversy surrounding the issuance of permits for siting and operating fish farms based on cage systems in open waters?
Many of the arguments that opponents have against cage culture are not backed by science, but nevertheless the battle goes on. For me, the fact that fish farmers do not own the water in which they are rearing their
fish – because the net pens are located in “the commons” where the waters belong to everyone – is the fundamental issue, yet it is rarely mentioned in the debate.
Cage production systems are typically located in near-shore ocean waters. Such waters do not belong to any individuals or corporations, but are under the jurisdiction of the nation claiming the shoreline next to the water. The absence of individual ownership does not, however, stop the people living on those shores from considering the waters to be “theirs” even though they belong to the entire nation.
Many production units are visible from shore or elevated observation points on land. The cage systems that I have observed in such locations certainly were not eyesores; however, opponents of aquaculture often claim that “spoiling the natural view” is a primary reason they oppose permits for new aquaculture cage units.
Given the fact that “beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” there probably is nothing that can be done to change the minds of these opponents. New systems that are totally submerged can negate their visual-impact argument, but opponents could simply switch to a different argument, such as the supposed introduction of a host of disease agents: parasites, bacteria, fungi and viruses. This argument is simply not true because the agents causing disease are already there,
present in the wild environment. The disease agents simply take advantage of the potential hosts who cannot escape them. The fish held in rearing units in all aquaculture systems can only be as crowded as the fish will tolerate in order for the system to be efficient. A dense population of fish is an ideal environment for disease agents, however, this is a fish health problem and can be managed through carefully designed and operated rearing systems.
Blaming cages and net pens for water pollution are warranted in some instances, but typically those situations are a site-location problem and not a cage-operations problem. An example would be when an operation is sited in shallow water with little movement.
The escape of non-native fish into local waters can certainly happen, but robustly engineered cage systems could prevent this. Restricting cage culture operations to native species – such as Washington State’s decision to ban the farming of non-native species in 2018 – is seen as preventing such situations. But it can also be argued that the escape of “desirable” species into a new environment may not be a serious problem as most fishes reared cage systems are not considered to be pests.
The attractiveness of the penned fish to avian and mammalian predators is another argument that anti-farming activists put forward against cage culture. This I acknowledge to be true. Years ago when I was a young professor in South Dakota, we set up an experimental cage culture system in pits owned by the university. The pits had been dug to construct a new freeway and were easily accessible. We chose to produce black bullheads, a species popular with the local community. The fish adapted readily to the design we had developed and consumers preferred the cultured fish to its wild counterpart. But it wasn’t only the people who found them to be tasty – mink quickly had their sights on the new “free lunch,” forcing us to change the design of the cages. The only pushback we experienced came from the community for our inability to produce more fish to meet their demand. A similar system in central Iowa in which we grew walleye attracted avian predators, but there were neither mammalian piscivores nor objections from neighbors.
The most serious problem for cage culture operations appears to be the fact they seldom are located in private ponds or reservoirs. Opponents to all forms of aquaculture seize on an array of imagined problems, and a few real issues to oppose permitting fish culture in the commons, the publicly owned waters. “Cages in the commons” will always draw opposition.
The ‘fear is real’ about the impending FDA rules, says an
FARM-TO-TABLE traceability rules are about to get tougher
What does it mean for fish farmers?
BY LYNN FANTOM
The alarm probably won’t go off until 2024, but the clock is ticking as the seafood industry begins to grasp the full impact of newly introduced US requirements for food traceability. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) knows they’re not simple. In fact, it took a lawsuit, and close to a decade, to prod the agency into publishing them.
Among the provisions, a trout farm or oyster grower must keep specified records and, if an FDA representative requests, provide them in 24 hours. Beyond producers, the sweeping legislation affects businesses up and down the supply chain, from distributors to processors to retailers.
The challenge before the industry now is how to capture and share data about every product as it makes its way to the consumer’s plate.
“It’s not an overnight fix. I don’t really know if all the players realize how short the runway is, even though the rule isn’t final yet,” says Frank Terzoli, longtime seafood expert who has spearheaded traceability programs for IBM and now the World Wildlife Fund (WWF).
Sweeping overhaul
The pending rule is part of the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA), signed in 2011 to reform US food safety laws. Hailed as long
overdue, it gave the FDA mandatory recall power and expanded access to food safety records. It also directed the FDA to designate high-risk foods and the records producers must keep.
But by 2018, there was still no list, and the Center for Food Safety sued. In a settlement, the FDA agreed to publish the rule by September 8, 2020. A period of public comment closed in February this year. Now the agency has until November 7, 2022 to finalize the rule, known as FSMA Section 204. Food companies will have two years after that to comply.
That may seem like a long time. But Bob Rheault, executive director of East Coast Shellfish Growers Association (ECSGA), says, “I fear this only puts off the pain it will inflict.”
List of high-risk foods
Spinach, eggs, and peanut butter caused some of the largest food recalls. However, when the FDA ran its risk-ranking model, fish also ended up on the list. It includes finfish (except catfish), crustaceans, and mollusks (except scallop abductor muscles) — both wild-caught and farmed.
Awareness of what’s coming down ranges widely. Many, like Blue Ridge Aquaculture, are familiar with the pending rule “at a high level.”
“We support consumer visibility into where their food comes from,” says Martin Gardner who directs business development at the largest producer of tilapia in the US.
“I am aware of the proposed rule and have reached out to our board about it,” says Katie
Harris, president of the US Trout Farmers Association. “A lot more research needs to be done.”
Others, especially those who have already dug deeply into the data requirements, are “starting to get a little panicked,” according to Chip Terry, co-founder of BlueTrace (formerly Oyster Tracker).
But from where he sits as “the classic middleman,” Joe Lasprogata of Samuels and Son Seafood thinks that “the aquaculture guys are ahead of the game.”
Awareness to implementation
Lasprogata has been at the large Philadelphia-based distributor for 32 years. The process of digitization is “daunting,” but it is something he already started three years ago to improve efficiency. “Section 204 just accelerated the process,” he says.
But it won’t come cheap. He estimates that the cost for new software, licensing, wireless scanners, and printers will exceed $500,0000.
The rule will also impose “a substantial burden on small dealers to invest in new software, training, tags, and scanners,” says Rheault. However, shellfish farmers “can pick up software for a few hundred bucks and with some training come into compliance.”
“But I don’t want to minimize the resistance the FDA will face if they do this poorly,” he adds. Some of that concern centers on data creation.
Event-based traceability
At a public meeting last December, FDA deputy commissioner Frank Yiannas warned the audience that it would be hearing “a lot of talk about data and standards.” But, he emphasized, “this is ultimately all about protecting consumers from contaminated foods.”
Although the FDA will not require electronic records, it does “strongly encourage” them. Digitization may be the only way to produce an “electronic, sortable spreadsheet” in 24 hours without serious headaches.
The FDA’s proposed system follows critical tracking events (CTEs) in the supply chain and stipulates capture of key data elements (KDEs) along the way. It will also require creation of a “lot” identified by a specific code, such as a “batch,” “production run” or, in the case of growers, what’s harvested in a 24-hour period.
A key question is whether the FDA system requires everyone to capture and store the data in exactly the same way at every step. Disruption can be prevented by a common schema that enables users to simply correlate data from various sources. But this makes certain IT design standards mandatory.
The average oyster goes through five to seven steps between the time it leaves the farm and the moment it lands on a bed of crushed ice. So, if the FDA needs to speed
This current move isn’t the first regulation of seafood. In 1997, the FDA mandated seafood processors adopt Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point (HACCP) principles, requiring companies to identify food safety hazards and create plans to control them. (June HACCP “guidance” was 404-pages long, not counting 12 appendices.)
“Many larger dealers may welcome the new rule since they probably have already made a lot of these investments in an effort to speed inventory control and maintain HACCP records (such as receiving and shipping logs),” Rheault wrote to ECSGA members in December.
But the rule could be a “disaster if they try to impose their solutions on our industry in ways that result in a wholesale restructuring of our regulatory model,” he told ANA recently.
Rheault also notes there is strong resistance to putting data into the Cloud. “That’s because of the libertarian sense of most growers, harvesters, dealers, and business people who don’t trust the government and don’t want their financial data exposed. Most of all, they don’t want their competitors to learn their customers. Not that any of that would likely happen. But the fear is real.”
Tools for transformation
While FDA action stalled during the last decade, momentum grew in the private sector and among NGOs.
In 2017, the WWF and the Institute of Food Technologists launched the Global Dialogue on Seafood Traceability (GDST). That initiative has since brought together some 80 companies worldwide with seafood sales over US$35 billion annually — much of which is imported to the US.
Six months before the FDA published Section 204, GDST released the first-ever global technical standards for tracking seafood from points of origin to sale. As collaborators on SeaBOS, salmon producers Mowi and Cermaq endorsed and implemented GDST standards.
“There’s very strong overlap” between the GDST standards and FDA requirements,” says David Schorr of WWF. “And there’s no conflict.”
That’s encouraging, especially since GDST is well along in its learning curve. Last year, its standards were successfully piloted in a test with GS-1, originator of the ubiquitous barcode scanned at retailers.
The market will require traceability, Schorr believes. “The writing is on the wall. It’s coming fast, but the good news is that all the tools are there.”
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Pure-strain striped bass: An opportunity waiting to be tapped
The market opportunity for striped bass exists, is strong and largely untapped — and it is for the taking. This is the message from American researchers who explored the potential opportunities for commercial-scale farming of striped bass (Morone saxatilis) in the United States.
The fundamentals, such as the culture methods and the supply of marine striped bass bred in captivity, are already established, said authors Andersen, L.K. et al. in a 2021 paper titled, “The status of striped bass, Morone saxatilis, as a commercially ready species for US marine aquaculture.”
The authors wrote that pure-strain striped bass meets all of the criteria that could diversify aquaculture into coastal areas: the species fetches a premium price; there’s high, albeit inconsistent, consumer demand; it adapts well to localized production environments and, perhaps more importantly, it can live in fresh or saltwater unlike its hybrid counterpart.
Hybrid striped bass is farmed in the US
(farm gate value in 2018 was $50 million), but it — nor any other currently available commercial aquaculture species — could not meet the “high demand” seen in the mid-Atlantic region for larger, white-fleshed marine fish with desired size of 3 to 5 lb per fish, they wrote. They noted that the growth and feed efficiency of hybrid striped bass declines after it reaches 1.5-lb weight, but there are some
producers in Texas and Mississippi that have grown hybrid striped bass to 3 lb in 18 to 24 months. The pure strain can grow to the target market size of 3 lb within approximately 24 months or less.
However, there are challenges in getting this potentially new industry off the ground. These are the lack of current commercial US producers and data to support the economic viability of commercial production, the authors said.
To solve them, industry partners, government researchers, policymakers and university scientists have banded together to form “StriperHUB,” a program that will be coordinated by the North Carolina Sea Grant.
StriperHUB will define striped bass markets and economics of production, develop education and training programs, clarify regulatory permitting and licensing procedures, and promote comprehensive outreach and visibility among likely producers and consumers of this new seafood product, which will be available in markets along the Eastern US Coast, announced the NC State University.
The university is instrumental in laying the ground work for the potential new industry. Its researchers have bred six generations of marine striped bass in captivity as part of the
R&D to provide broodfish for hybrid striped bass (Morone chrysops x Morone saxatilis) food fish production and recreational fishery stock enhancement. Those marine striped bass are distributed across North America and are the potential sources for the envisioned commercial-scale farming.
Once commercial striped bass production and marketing has been demonstrated, venture capital investment will be required for the next phase of industry development, said the study authors.
Company adds nets to product range
Fish farming supplier Gael Force Group now offers nets PHOTO:
Gael Force Group, a Scottish manufacturer and supplier of aquaculture equipment, has expanded its product range to include nets, partnering with South American net manufacturer FISA in this new foray.
“The inclusion of nets in our product range means we will further enhance our capability to offer a complete turnkey supply of high-quality marine equipment, technology and supporting services,” said Gael Force. It added that FISA has a large production capacity and have made considerable investments in advanced machinery technology, engineers, and R&D over the years.
In the deal between the two parties, FISA will supply and develop aquaculture nets in Scotland, partner in international markets and exclusively manufacture a new SeaQureNet for Gael Force.
It has engaged the services of John Howard of Boris Nets to support the new offering. Plans to establish a net servicing station in the UK are in the works.
BC’s homegrown RAS operator preps for rapid growth, names CEO
With Blue Star Foods Corp’s acquisition of British Columbia-based Taste of BC Aquafarms now complete, the land-based producer of steelhead salmon is ready to embark on an “aggressive expansion,” according to founder Steve Atkinson.
Over the next few years it plans to to build at least twenty 1,500-tonne RAS facilities.
As part of the scale-up strategy, the company has named Ben Atkinson as CEO of Taste of BC Aquafarms. It is also hiring additional personnel and looking for equipment suppliers willing to be with the company for the long term.
“Ben believes in challenging assumptions and traditions established by historical production methods to find new, faster and more efficient production methods. By systematically evaluating every aspect of salmon production in RAS, he and Taste of BC have successfully established real-world metrics in a commercial RAS facility that provide profitable and sustainable land-based salmon production,” the company said.
Miami-based Blue Star Foods meanwhile plans to list its common shares on the Nasdaq Stock Market. Equity research firm Diamond Equity Research, which has initiated coverage of Blue Star Foods, says the company has “significant growth potential” because of its investment in the “highly disruptive and high-growth RAS market.”
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