Do farmed salmon consume more food than they produce?
All farm animals consume more food than the meat that we obtain from them. For example, cows require about 6 pounds of grain and chickens about 2 pounds of feed for every pound of meat that is produced. Salmon are in fact very efficient converters of food into edible flesh, and Atlantic salmon in BC consume only 1.1 pounds of feed for every pound they grow. Fishmeal is a large component of salmon feed, and the species used to make it are typically small or bony fish, with a low proportion of edible flesh and for which there are few alternative uses. Globally, salmon farms use about a third of all the fishmeal, and the rest is used in poultry and other animal feeds. Much of fish meal that ends up on farmed salmon food comes from Chile and Peru , where government controls on the fishing industry are designed to ensure sustainability.
