Where does the fish meal and fish oil for feeds come from?
Pelagic fish species are the most used for the supply of fish oil and fish meal; generally, these are unsuitable for human consumption because they are small and bony and it would not be economically viable to process them to consumer needs. They are caught off the coasts of Peru and Chile and in the North Atlantic, North Sea and the Baltic Sea. There have been suggestions recently that these species are overfished. While the FAO report The State of Worldfisheries and Aquaculture(2002) concludes that only 18 percent of stocks or species groups are reported as overexploited. The species classified as overfished tend to be long-lived, slow-growing fish that are less able to support high exploitation rates than the faster-growing, short-lived species predominantly used for fish oil and fish meal. Both Chile and Peru have tight government controls on fishing and fishing stops are imposed and policed through boat tracking systems in order to prevent overfishing. They actively manage their f
