Fish as feed: Using economic allocation to quantify the Fish In : Fish Out ratio of major fed aquaculture species

作者：Björn Kok, Wesley Malcorps, Michael F. Tlusty, Mahmoud Eltholth, Neil A. Auchterlonie, David C. Little, Robert Harmsen, Richard Newton, Simon J. Davies · 发表于：Aquaculture · 年份：2020 · DOI：10.1016/j.aquaculture.2020.735474 · 被引用次数：172 · 研究领域：Aquaculture Nutrition and Growth、Marine Bivalve and Aquaculture Studies、Child Nutrition and Water Access

Efficiency assessments of marine ingredient use in aquaculture are required to fully understand their contribution to global seafood supply and their impacts on all UN Sustainable Development Goals. Fish In: Fish Out (FIFO) ratios have become the principal metric used to ensure aquaculture does not negatively impact wild fish stocks. However, several approaches have been advocated to calculate the FIFO ratio and there have been criticisms that the different approaches employed lead to over- or under- estimates of the dependence of aquaculture on marine ingredients. Critically, FIFO does not align with Life Cycle Assessment as a measure of other environmental impacts. In this paper we present an alternative method to calculate the FIFO ratio based on the principle of economic allocation (economic Fish In: Fish Out – eFIFO) as commonly used in Life Cycle Assessments. Economic allocation acts as a proxy for the nutritional value of ingredients and places higher importance on the more limiting co-products generated and their relative demand. Substitution of marine ingredients by alternate feed ingredients has significantly reduced the amount of fishmeal and fish oil in aquafeed formulations for most farmed fish species, resulting in a continually decreasing FIFO ratio. Results show that most aquaculture species groups assessed in this study are net producers of fish, while salmon and trout aquaculture are net neutral, producing as much fish biomass as is consumed. Overall, global...