Industry experts have assembled to replace fishmeal with an alternative marine protein source to investigate gut health and growth performance benefits in meat chickens.
The Innovate UK project, ‘Farmed Marine Proteins for Poultry Feed’, assessed the feasibility of using artemia meal – Artemeal – as a novel protein source to replace fishmeal for young broilers to monitor their health and growth as well as reduce environmental impact.
Lead partner, Aquanzo Ltd, has joined forces with Scotland’s Rural College (SRUC) and the UK Agri-Tech Centre with an aim to offer the animal feed industry an alternative ingredient to fishmeal and offer a long-term solution to the current marine protein ingredient crisis.
Marine ingredients, in the form of fishmeal, are one of the best sources of nutrients for young farm animals, both terrestrial (especially young broilers and peri-weaning piglets) and aquatic.
However, harvesting (fishing) of marine ingredients has a significant impact on the environment, sustainability is stretched to its limits, greenhouse gas emissions are significant due to long distance transport and the long-term resilience of the sector is dependent on a fragile environmental balance under climate change threat.
Additionally, the animal feed sector, as well as broiler meat production, has increased massively over recent decades, while marine ingredients harvests have been stagnating for the past 40 years.
This has led to the current marine protein ingredient crisis, driving up its cost so much that least-cost formation results in it no longer being used in poultry rations.
To address the core marine protein availability problem with a long-term solution — as opposed to producing alternative ingredients — Aquanzo is developing technologies to sustainably produce the marine zooplankton ‘artemia’ at scale and on land and process it into marine protein ingredients for the animal feed industry.
What are the benefits?
By farming artemia, this novel animal feed production system will offer a long-term solution to the over-exploitation and use of wild marine protein ingredients.
It will benefit the consumers by offering a product with no ocean-harvested ingredients but without losing the proven benefits of marine ingredients’ inclusion for the animal’s health and farming productivity.
Additionally, the ability to exploit agricultural byproducts as a feedstock to grow artemia will enhance the UK circular economy.
It will benefit the compound feed manufacturers by offering access to like-for-like or even better products than fishmeal, which can be tailored, sustainably produced and of constant quality with reduced emission (precision farming system), all of which are not possible from harvesting marine protein.
A comprehensive life cycle assessment (LCA) of Artemeal has been conducted for Aquanzo and will assist in its drive for evermore sustainable production systems.
To ensure the project aligns to the industry’s technical, environmental and commercial needs, dissemination and knowledge exchange is a strong component of this project through engagement with our expert advisory panel and wider stakeholders.
Demonstrating the feasibility of using artemia meal in starter broiler feed (replacing fishmeal) opened the way to pioneering a new sector in the animal feed industry.
Farmed marine proteins, alongside other novel ingredients such as insects and single cell proteins, will develop a portfolio approach to support the development of a strong and resilient livestock feed industry in England, the UK and further afield.
What are the impacts?
The output of the project will consist of:
- A prototype artemia production facility and scaled-up Artemeal production process.
- A set of reports and databases summarising the main findings, specifically:
- The agricultural and industrial feedstocks landscape available for producing Artemeal.
- A correlation database between the nutritional profile of both these feedstocks and the Artemeal produced.
- Reports and publications summarising nutritional value of, and growth performances on, Artemeal as fishmeal replacer for broilers, and its sustainability through LCA.
- A series of dissemination activities, materials and articles for industry and academic audiences.
Farming marine protein has the potential to revolutionise the animal feed sector, by combining the best of marine ingredients (nutritional value, taste and energy) and farming (scalable, controllable and sustainable precision platform).
At the industrial scale, Aquanzo is forecasting production capacity of thousands of tonnes of Artemeal per year at scale.
The production volume in the next five years would supplement over 10% of the entire UK poultry starter diets (for chicks), feeding over 100m birds.
Aquanzo’s overarching mission is to offer feed manufacturers, farmers and consumers access to Zero Ocean Impact protein without sacrificing the benefits of using marine ingredients; realise significant productivity and health benefits in farmed animals by developing a portfolio of products tailored to specific needs; and improve protein production sustainability by optimising genetics (strain selection), feedstocks (agricultural and industrial byproducts) and artemia production systems (low emission/high efficiency precision farms).
Remi Gratacap, CEO at Aquanzo, said: “This project came together thanks to an amazing team who made it all run smoothly.
“We showed that fishmeal can successfully be upgraded with locally farmed marine ingredients in chick diets, proving a sustainable long-term solution to harvesting wild resources.”
Lee Cocker, Project Manager at UK Agri-Tech Centre, said: “This has been an important and fascinating project and I am extremely proud to have been part of a team that has made such positive advances. The future is bright for Artemeal.”
Jos Houdijk and Marwa Hussein, researchers at SRUC, said: “It was great to observe that birds fed Artemeal during the first days of life outperformed those fed fishmeal and that this carried through to being heavier at harvest.
“These benefits concurred with beneficial impacts on gut microbiome and immune organs, suggesting a great future of Artemeal for robust, resilient poultry production.”
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