Does fish farming use more wild fish than it produces?

Nope, that was probably true like 20 years ago, but thanks to advances in feed science AND more sustainable ingredients, farmed fish are a super eco protein!

A big difference of trout and salmon — compared with other farmed animals like cows and chickens — is that they’re predators at the top of the food chains. This means regardless if they’re wild or farmed, their diet is mostly protein.

In the wild, your average salmon has to eat 7lbs of other wild fish to produce a pound of meat. When it comes to tuna, some estimate up to 34lbs of wild fish.

On our farm, it takes 0.4 pounds of other fish to grow a pound of trout or salmon, and shrinking. And that isn’t all coming from wild fish. We use reclaimed trimmings from other fish species as much as possible, and we’re even trialing cricket feed starting next month!

The auditors from our eco-certification Best Aquaculture Practices watch our feed closely. Every year we have to provide proof of our fish in/fish out ratios and forage fish dependency ratios, just to make sure we’re as eco-friendly as we can be!