fishmeal.org / Quality / Specifications
Specifications
A fish meal spec sheet is a short document with a long memory — every line is a proxy for something that happened to the fish.
| Line | What it measures | Typical limit (quality meal) |
|---|---|---|
| Crude protein | Protein mass fraction | 60–68%; premium grades at 67–68 |
| Moisture | Water — storage and spoilage risk | 10% max |
| Crude fat | Residual oil after pressing | 10% max |
| Ash | Mineral content — bone fingerprint | 12–18% (salt-free ash capped near 14) |
| Salt & sand | Insolubles | 4–5% max |
| TVN | Volatile nitrogen — freshness | Premium caps near 60 mg N/100 g |
| Ammoniacal nitrogen | Breakdown products | 0.5% |
Three families of numbers sit on the page. Composition — protein, fat, moisture — tells you what you are buying. Freshness — TVN, histamine, ammoniacal nitrogen — tells you what the fish was like before it was cooked. Honesty — ash, salt and sand — tells you whether the "whole fish" on the label was whole fish or processing trimmings: bone raises ash. The raw-materials chapter explains why that distinction prices.
Hygiene lines — Salmonella absence, dioxins and PCBs caps — sit outside the grade ladder: they are pass/fail gates set by feed safety law in the importing market, not quality rungs.
- ChemTradeAsia — fish meal specifications (Jan 2026) — www.chemtradeasia.com/market-insights/fish-meal-specifications-aquacultu (accessed 2026-10-24)
- Agriculture Institute — quality standards for fish meal — agriculture.institute/fish-by-products-waste-utilization/quality-standar (accessed 2026-10-24)
- Feed specification guidance (Sunrise Rendering, Oct 2026) — www.sunriserendering.com/fr/how-to-read-fish-meal-specification-protein- (accessed 2026-10-24)
- FAO fishmeal in animal feed (Seafood Network mirror) — seafood.media/snp/fishmeal.htm (accessed 2026-10-24)