Fish Processor and Retail Challenges

Nigel Edwards, Technical Director of Seachill, presented a clear set of insights on the priorities held by large retailers and processors in seeking to meet the needs of their customers. As a result of rapidly evolving customer priorities, these are the innovation challenges from the retailer/processor point of view:

• The industry must maintain the considerable nutritional benefits from eating farmed fish and provide for increased demand despite the stable or declining feed fish stocks
• All feed raw materials must be demonstrably sustainable, we need a responsible sourcing standard for feed producers
• There is a need to reduce the contaminants in fishmeal and oil
• The top line feed conversion ratio could be improved
• It is unacceptable to enhance the human nutritional benefits by genetic modification of fish

Improving the ratio of conversion of feed fish to farmed fish should be a research priority but not at the expense of

• fish health
• human nutrition, (especially EPA and DHA content)
• intrinsic quality of the final product
• cost of production

Reduce cost of production by

• automation
• improved feed conversion
• reduced mortality
• lower energy use
• lower feed wastage

Improve fish welfare by:

• introducing new vaccines
• improved fish handling techniques
• instantaneous stunning prior to slaughter

Other innovation priorities:

• introduce new species to aquaculture especially those that have a low cost of production
• Support development of organic standards for all species and assist farmers to be efficient within organic farming regime

As well as working for Seachill (part of the Icelandic Group), Nigel is a member of the GLOBALGAP Aquaculture Sector Committee. GLOBALGAP is a private sector body that sets voluntary standards for the certification of agricultural products around the globe.

Nigel’s March 2007 presentation can be viewed here.

Posted in Market. Permalink for this post: permalink. If you are a Digg user, please  Digg this post. If you use use Del.icio.us, then add us in:  Del.icio.us

What do you think?

Leave a comment! Or send a trackback from your own blog.

RSS