Norway’s Salmon Farms Turn to Vegetarian Diets for Sustainability

Norway, a country renowned for its abundant marine life and thriving fishing industry, is making a significant shift towards more sustainable practices in its salmon farming sector. The shift towards a more vegetarian diet for salmon is a response to concerns over sustainability and the depletion of fish stocks used in fish meal.

At the Oksebasen fish farm, located at the crossing of two fjords in western Norway, salmon are under constant watch on mobile underwater cameras. When the fish show signs of hunger, employees at an operations center 100 kilometers (60 miles) away turn on a “sub-feeder” that releases special pellets. These pellets consist primarily of plant-based materials, 20 to 30 percent fish oil and meal, as well as vitamins, minerals, and pigment to give the salmon’s flesh its characteristic pink color.

Magnulf Giske, the operations manager at Mowi, the world’s largest producer of Atlantic salmon, explains that before, fish feed was made exclusively of marine ingredients. However, this solution is less sustainable than replacing some of these marine ingredients with soy protein or other plant-based materials. For the industry, avoiding overfishing is a question of sustainability and a way of ensuring business growth. With limited stocks of small fish typically used in fish meal, such as anchovies, sprat, and herring, fish farms have turned to cheaper plant-based materials to ramp up production.

The use of wild fish in fish feed has decreased in recent years but still remains an ingredient, according to environmental organizations. They are concerned about the negative impact that the fishing of these fish has on aquatic birds and impoverished populations in places such as West Africa. The fish in the feed, as well as the soy and plant protein, “could have been used directly for human consumption,” but instead, they are given to salmon to make a more expensive, more well-paid product for the rich.

The shift towards a more vegetarian diet for salmon has not been without its challenges. The more vegetarian the diet, the more distant it is from the salmon’s original life, and the greater the difference between the original wild salmon and the domesticated farmed salmon. Farmed salmon grows faster, develops differently, and acts differently. There is also a risk of genetic pollution of natural stocks.

To reduce their environmental footprint, fish farms need to find alternative methods. Erik-Jan Lock, a researcher at the Norwegian food research institute Nofima, says that salmon feed is more sustainable than it was last year or the year before, but it can become even more sustainable. Making better use of human food waste, using little-used marine resources such as mussels and sea squirts, or even insects are among the possible options that could be explored.

The Pronofa company is researching sustainable protein alternatives. In containers at its site in the southeastern town of Fredrikstad, it is studying the black soldier fly, whose larvae increase their weight 7,000-fold in just two weeks. Project manager David Tehrani explains that the fish industry in Norway gives human food to the salmon, which is not a good thing to do. Here, they have a good alternative to fish meal. Black soldier flies “are the best machines nature gives us: they eat all the time, they don’t sleep, they don’t take a coffee break.” Apart from glass, concrete, and steel, they eat everything. The only catch? It’s a pricier solution. Fish farmers, for whom feed represents their biggest cost, have yet to take the bait.

In conclusion, Norway’s salmon farms are turning to vegetarian diets to make their businesses more sustainable. While this shift has its challenges, it is a necessary step towards reducing the industry’s environmental footprint and ensuring the continued growth of the industry. The use of plant-based materials in fish feed is a more sustainable solution than relying on limited fish stocks, and research into alternative protein sources, such as the black soldier fly, offers promising solutions for the future.