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Invisible Industry Episode 9 Aquaculture
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hi everyone and welcome to the invisible
industry as you know this is the podcast
where we discuss and educate on
everything you didn't know you didn't
know about agricultural rendering and
it's brought to you by the North
American renderers Association orara I'm
your moderator Anna Wilkinson I am the
vice president of communications for
Nara and joining me as always is our
host Mr Marcus Wier Marcus thank you as
always very exciting episode today we
are going to be talking all about
aquaculture aquaculture is something
that we discuss quite a bit here at Nara
um and in the rendering industry at
large you'll understand why soon but we
have yet to dedicate a full episode to
it on the podcast so I'm happy to say
that we are doing that today and joining
us to help us with that is Dr George
Chamberlain Dr Chamberlain thank you so
much for being here with us uh without
further Ado I'm going to go ahead and
turn it over to Marcus to introduce our
guest and to get us started thanks for
the introduction Anna and thank you for
joining us here today uh today's episode
is about aquaculture and our guest is Dr
George Chamberlain who is the president
of the center for responsible Seafood Dr
George Chamberlain started his
aquaculture career in 1975 as a
researcher instructor and extension
aquaculture specialist at Texas ANM
University for the next 10 years he
directed The aquaculture programs at
Ralston Purina International and Mons
Santo from 1999 to 2020 he founded and
managed several shrimp breeding
nutrition and farming companies
ultimately known as Kona Bay with
operations in Malaysia brunai and Hawaii
concurrent with his commercial
activities Chamberlain served as a board
member and president of the world
agriculture society and later helped
found both the global Seafood Alliance
GSA and the center for responsible
Seafood tcrs he served for 25 years as
president of GSA and now leads tcrs nice
to for you to be here today George oh
thank you Marcus and thank you Anna for
inviting me pleasure to be here I've
enjoyed working with the renderers for
quite a few years now great opportunity
first off uh could you Define
aquaculture for us well that's a that's
a really easy one Marcus it's the
farming of aquatic organisms but if you
if you think about it you know um it has
tremendous diversity that's the unique
thing about aquaculture as compared to
poultry or or swine or cattle um there
was a recent food and agriculture
organization report they do it every two
years called the uh state of world
fisheries and aquaculture it's
abbreviated Sophia and they say that
there are
730 species of farmed aquatic organisms
and some of them are animals and some of
them are plants like algae and
seaweed and the remarkable thing about
this year's Sophia report is the first
time ever that aquaculture production
globally has exceeded wild catch it's
kind of a milestone you know can you
imagine I remember as a young boy
walking along the beach and looking out
at the ocean and it looked infinite it
looked like you know the amount of
seafood that's there is um we could
never possibly reach a maximum
sustainable yield but we have long ago
and now that same amount of seafood and
more is being farmed there's such a
variety of um species and such a variety of
of
habitats and such a variety of culture
systems so that's the unique thing about
aquaculture is the the diversity
incredible diversity that's fascinating
I've never realized uh that aquaculture
extended Beyond Just Fish uh so with it
being so diverse how can something like
rendered products I know there is a
variety of rendered products but how do
those relate to the world of aquaculture
Marcus actually you know there are two
ways um one aquaculture is a user of
those rendered animal
byproducts um aquaculture has grown a
lot over the last 50 years and in the
early days it had a high
Reliance on fish meal and fish oil which
are actually you know rendered animal
byproducts taken from wild
fish but that Supply is finite there's
only four to five million metric tons of
fish meal available in the world and
that's the max it's never going to
increase but aquaculture continues to
increase at a fast rate it's the fastest
growing um animal protein sector in the
world in terms of percent increase and
and so it's
outstripping the availability of fish
meal and oil and so the aquaculture feed
industry is constantly looking for
Alternatives how can reduce that level
of fish meal and oil and rendered animal
byproducts are one of those
Solutions um blood meal feather meal and
I would say in particular poultry
byproduct meal is a very popular
substitute uh for fish meal in fact um
last year uh the center for responsible
Seafood conducted a survey on sh shrimp
feeds and we contacted eight of the
world's leading shrimp feed
manufacturers and they agreed to anonymously
anonymously
disclose their typical formula for
growout feed for shrimp which is um
difficult to do because those are prized
confidential bits of
information but we looked at that and we
were surprised to see that poultry
byproduct meal was in the majority of
shrimp feeds and it's at a significant
level so number one um aquaculture is a
user of rendered animal byproducts but
number two aquaculture is a
producer so when every um aquaculture
animal is harvested and processed it too
generates trimmings and it too has um
a need
to uh
recycle those products into New Uses so
really we have a lot to learn from our fellow
fellow
um uh members of this sector in in the
rendering area about how to be more
efficient in rendering and we hope that
some of the rendering companies will
enter into the aquaculture world to play
a role and
uh we hope also that the renderers will
continue to provide well really an
increasing quantity of products to this
sector and there are some you know
special needs of this
sector um aquaculture probably like all
foods is under pressure
from uh indirectly from consumers but
directly from uh retailers and seafood
buyers to continually improve the
sustainability of the product and part
of that
is the largest part of the carbon
footprint of uh aquaculture products is
the feed so is aquaculture itself pretty
sustainable environmentally economically
yes I think so I think um it's been
under the microscope maybe more than
others and um consequently I think it's
made great strides yes one of one of the
things that um maybe uh we should
emphasize is a concept called the
circular economy which was is so
important you know to to take the
byproducts or or trimmings of a given
sector and to reuse them and to put them
back into the into the cycle and that's
uh one of the connections we have with
the renderers where uh the the trimmings
are generated into a stable high value
useful product that goes back into feeds
is fed again and not wasted and
contributes to the sustainability of the
industry and you know I I would mention
that this is um a really the speed
sector is evolving fast and there are
many novel ingredients as well and there
are groups that are trying to find
substitutes for the highly unsaturated
oils in fish that are really valuable
for our health either by producing algal
oils or by genetically modifying row
crops like canola and chamina so that
instead of vegetable oil they produce
these longchain fatty acids so this this
whole idea of you know how to produce
sustainable ingredients the whole sector
is evolving
and the
rendered uh sector is a very important
component of it because it recycles
through the circular economy all these
nutrients back into the system so you
talk about nutrients and things that
kind of makes me think of uh
formulations for different types of
animals how how is the formula different
for uh something that's going to
aquaculture uh versus what would go to
something on land um like animal feed
and pet food actually you know in some
ways they're very similar the basic
nutrients the amino acids fatty acids vitamins
vitamins
minerals a lot of the uh nutrients of
course are the same but the the levels
of those nutrients are different so for
example protein in let's say chicken and
pig diets is maybe half of what's in
most shrimp and cryst ation diets uh
chickens and pigs might range from 15%
protein to
23% and most fish feeds are in the 30 to
40% range so much higher protein levels
in the aquatic
organisms but
um the feed
conversion uh tends to be tends to be
lower in the aquatic organisms
so in general um fish and crustations
range between um oh about as low as one
Fe conversion of one up to about a
little over two and of course um on the
terrestrial side cattle can be um 8 to
10 on the Fe conversion pigs can be
around three and poultry around two so
so in general aquaculture is a requires
a higher protein but it's a very good
converter of
nutrients and there are a couple of
reasons why um aquatic organisms are
efficient one
is they live in the water and they don't
attempt to maintain their own body
temperature not like us you know we a
lot of animals need to maintain a body
temp temperature whether it's hot or
cold and that's an energy
expenditure and the other thing is that
these aquatic organisms are either
buoyant in the water neutrally buoyant
or they're on the bottom they they don't
have to resist the effects of gravity
like uh like land animals don't have to
have heavy bones skeleton and that's
also s that also saves on energy cost I
would say the one disadvantage of
aquatic animals is breathing you know
land animals can take a breath and
there's plenty of oxygen right there all
the time in in an aquaculture world it's
dissolved in water it's a little more
difficult to get and there can be local
imbalances where there can be shortages
of oxygen in the water uh for a period
of time so anyway some advantages and
disadvantages but as a as a general rule
um higher protein requirements but
better feed conversion I want a pet food
nutritionalist look at the formulation
compared to someone in the aquaculture
would that be uh significantly different
as well since they have the same
advantages and disadvantages it's a it's
a very good question the interesting
thing about pets is no pet owner cares
about feed conversion or growth rate you
know what they really are most focused
on is whether their pet enjoys the food
and so palatability is um really the
overwhelming uh interest of a pet owner
and of course health health of the
animal and and so there's a tremendous
amount of effort spent on um making sure
that the food tastes good and it turns
out that one of the real flavor
enhancers is from uh
hydrolized poultry and you know poultry
um byproducts you know the hydrolized
means that these um
poultry proteins are enzymatically
digested and a protein's a long molecule
and this enzyme chops it up over time
into shorter and shorter and
shorter um uh chain length and
and what the nutritionists do is they
stop that reaction at different points
in time uh so they're different chain
lengths and they feed those to pets and
then they say ah the the um the the most
desirable um digest or hydrolysate
they're called is when the protein
reaction goes this long and and then
they control it and and develop that and
industrialize it and that is added as um
as a ingredient to the feed and given
the fact that pet foods are among the
most pricey of feeds you know much more
expensive than of terrestrial animal
food or uh or an aquaculture food
feed uh then pet food manufacturers can
afford to um spend more on their
ingredients and select the very the very
best uh quality for example when they
buy poultry byproduct meal they'll want
What's called the pet food grade which
has less Ash less bone um and they're
also very selective about ingredients
that they bring from the aquaculture
side and they often are very selective
from a sustainability and carbon
footprint point of view so um
and then taking that same argument back
one notch let me say that aquaculture
feeds are in turn much more expensive
than terrestrial feeds so let's take an
example so
a oh shrimp feed might be around a
dollar a kilo salmon feed might be
around a dollar 60 a
kilo and um and if we look at
um oh for example U Pig and Chicken
feeds they're probably around $700 a
kilo so you see there's quite a
difference and that's
important from a feed point of view
because it means that the the
aquaculture feed
manufacturer has a little more money to
work with it's not quite as tight a
budget as a poultry feed or pig feed has
to deal with and it means they too can
select the higher quality products so
they'll Al often go for that same pet
food grade a poultry byproduct meal
because it fits better into the formula
has less Ash has better digestibility
and and um and they have the flexibility
to do it because their price range is a
little higher for those feeds with
aquaculture continuing to grow do you
anticipate a growth for render products
uh as uh being used in aquaculture and
what do you think the reasoning would be
behind that if there if there is one oh
I absolutely I mean the aquaculture
continues to grow the same Sophia report
um indicated that uh it's
the the outset of this uh presentation I
mentioned that for the first time a
global aquaculture production exceeds
wild catch
Landings uh in 1922 that's the uh this
year's report refers to 19 or 2022
data uh but that same report from
2022 indicates that um aquaculture is
expected to continue to grow fast and um
it's becoming you know um greater and
greater proportion of the diet um it
said something to the effect that in
1961 the per capita Global consumption of
of
seafood um not just the us but around
the world I believe it was yeah
9.1 kilos but in 2022 it's 20.7 it's
more than doubled
and and and so this is um not accounting
for population increase this is what
each person is eating and and we're
we're all globally eating more and more
Seafood because it's healthy and so the
the demand is going up and the demand
for the um the feed ingredients is going
up in at the same rate and our rendered
animal byproducts will be a very
important part and the farther we go
down the road the the the less
percentage of fish meal and oil can be
used in the diet and the more
substitutes will be required so it's
very important that um aquaculture and
renderers work together and as I say
aquaculture maybe can outbid land
proteins on some of these ingredients
and um is willing to pay more for them
because they've got a little more space
in their in their formulas just in
general can people consuming more fish
and and using aquaculture more what's
something that the general public should
know about aquaculture first of all
Seafood is is really healthy and I think
I think the general population realizes
that first of all it's a very balanced
form of protein but the the interesting
unique part of
seafood is the fats unlike
terrestrial um
Foods um aquatic foods have longchain
fatty acids and two of them in
particular we hear a lot about they're
both very important one of them is
called uh
EPA iosa pentanoic acid this is a a
longchain fatty acid that's very good
for the heart it it greatly reduces
heart attacks and the more we eat the
less susceptible we are to heart failure
and the other one is DHA docosahexanoic
acid and it's one that's very good for
the brain and also for prenatal
development this
U uh expectant mothers are encouraged to
have more DHA in their diet because it
improves the IQ and the dexterity of
their future child and um so EPA and DHA
they ultimately come from the algae in
the oceans and then they're they're
accumulated through the food chain into
the seafood that we eat and so it's very
important that we get those nutrients to
improve our health and seafood's just a
great source for that
so um I I think um
healthy and then you know the
sustainability story that we've already
talked about you know that um that hey
Seafood has a very low feed conversion
ratio you know it takes uh very little
feed to convert into Seafood that
um it uses
um less and less resources to produce a
kilogram of product and it's becom more
sustainable over time as we said this is
an evolving sector and all of the feed
Industries are animal Food Industries are
are
improving um but I think the
um the health of the nutrients
particularly the the fats is the main
differentiating point for seafood so uh
every year in July I like to watch a
shark week and they talk about the
migratory patterns of great whites and
and other sharks um one of our members
has also noticed that they typically see
a domestic use of dried blood in
aquaculture that starts in April and
goes through June is there a seasonality
to aquaculture production on what's
necessary and or formulation changes for
diets During certain parts of the Year
yes there is you know that's true and
and the in temperate locations like the
the US and Canada and Scotland and
Norway where there are species that are
raised in summer months and then much
colder winter months there can be a
change in the diet
absolutely um but we we have to remember
that you know aquaculture is a global
business and it's happening in the
tropics as well all around the world and
and that's a a yearr round business with
um continuous production and um and even
if there's a seasonality
Factor where we're demanding something
in the northern hemisphere conversely
the southern hemisphere at the same time
you know they're in the opposite season
so things globally tend to really
balance out but absolutely um seasonally
there can be differences in the diet
they uh for example with um channel
catfish raised in the Mississippi Delta
they found that um controlling
certain winter onset
diseases um is better if they adjust the
diet in one way or another I frankly I
don't recall exactly what that
adjustment is but um uh yes uh um
experience has shown that there can be
adjustments in the diet that improve
resistance to low temperature and so
forth and also for also for salinity and
places where the salt content of the
water is um exceptionally high they
often increase the protein level just a
little bit to help compensate for the
organism having to maintain the O
osmotic strength of their body in
relation to the external environment
thank you very much uh definitely sounds
like a fascinating industry uh if
someone was interested in starting a
career in aquaculture where would they
how would they start where would they go
well there's so many uh possibilities
you know when when I began you know a
long time ago I began by uh reading some
things I picked up uh well some popular
magazine articles then I dove into some
um some more technical books and I found
that I was totally
fascinated and um and then I went back
to school I went to graduate school and
got a master's and got a PhD but they're
but it's not necessary to dive in all
the way you you know you can do many
things for
example um I think one of the best
things would be to go
to um your State Extension agent and
learn about
aquaculture um browse the internet you
don't have to buy books like I did
before and there are so many many
fascinating uh YouTube videos of um the
full range of aquaculture I mean I um it
it just uh excites me to think about
these totally open ocean farming systems
which is kind of the dream of the jacqu
custos of the 1960s you know that we'll
Farm the ocean we literally we farming the
the
ocean and um and indoor high-tech
uh fully uh controlled and automated
systems that maintain the optimum
environment so there is no seasonality
no downtime you know they're they're
kept in the perfect environment and fed
the proper diets and no disease and um
but but I would say if someone is
interested to explore the field and
ultimately you know you would have to
ask yourself what aspect am I interested in
in
is there a particular species is there a
particular environment you know ocean
freshwater esterine cold warm and is
there a particular discipline so for
example there's a whole discipline on
the health of the animal like veterinary science
science vaccines
vaccines
um um probiotics uh um then there's the
genetic selection in breeding which
is you know you might not think that
anybody's breeding fish or shrimp but my
goodness it's a it's the most uh
important way to improve the performance
of the animal because you can with
breeding you can get like 10%
Improvement every single generation so
it's like
compounding interest from putting money
in a bank and there's not much we can do
with feeds or with Disease Control that
can consistently give us a 10%
Improvement and it's not just
Improvement in growth rate it can be
Improvement in resilience of the animal
in tolerance of environments of um
resistance to
disease and then there's the nutrition
area this whole topic that we've been
focused on with rendering and nutrients and
and
seeds there's the the growout probably
the thing that most people would first
think of is I'd love to just grow this
this uh
crop and um and then well we shouldn't
forget about the processing and the
marketing you know there's um such an
opportunity to inform consumers about
where Seafood comes from uh tracing it
back to the family and the you know the
waters and the and the way it was
cultured all around the world it's um I
I really expected someday that when
we're sitting in a restaurant we could
scan a QR code to to see where that
particular species uh was farmed and who
did it and uh and where and maybe a
video or two so it's
um yeah there are lots of ways to
explore this and and maybe one last way
I would
say um if there's uh if a person does a
little reading watches a few videos they
have an interest then go to a conference
um in the almost every state has their
annual aquaculture conference and then
there's an aquaculture America event
that happens in the US every year and
then there are lots of um international
events like in our organization the
center for responsible Seafood hosts one
called the shrimp Summit and each year
and the next one will be in Bali
Indonesia and we always uh include tours
to commercial facilities and there's
nothing like going to a conference and
um meeting approaching the actual
practitioners and there will be people
there that are involved in the feed side
of it in the growout side in the uh
processing and there'll be major buyers
maybe someone from Walmart or someone
from uh uh Red Lobster might be at these
meetings and and that's where you find
out by exchanging ideas and talking to
them where your interest really lies and
uh yeah it can be a fascinating career I
think there's when I first joined I was worried
worried
that that maybe there wouldn't be
anything more any more new stuff to
learn maybe it was almost tapped out oh
my gosh it's gone the other way Marcus
you know instead of you know running out
of new things it just you know
exponentially increases the amount of
stuff we have to learn in all these
areas so
that's not a worry there's going to be
plenty that we still need to learn
that's great to hear well thank you so
much for being our guest today this has
been a fascinating discussion and I hope
it'll be a great episode um thanks
everyone for watching and thank you Anna
for moderating as usual my pleasure and
if if anyone uh would like to ask any
question I I hope you'll contact me at
george. Chamberlin responsible seafood.
org thank you so much Marcus and huge
thank you again to Dr Chamberlain for
joining us we can't tell you how much we
appreciate it and thank you everyone out
there for being here once again for this
episode of The Invisible industry we
hope you'll join us again if you'd like
to learn more in the meantime about Nara
or the rendering industry you can visit
us at
n.org stay curious everyone and to all
our rendering listeners out there stay
seen and stay great [Music]
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