An Open Reference for the Fishmeal Trade

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Beyond · B1

Substitutes

Everything wants to be fishmeal. Three families of alternatives get closest — plants, insects, and microbes.

RouteWhere it standsThe limit
Plant proteinThe workhorse — soybean meal is aquafeed's volume ingredient; tested diets replace roughly 38–50% of fishmeal protein.[1]Palatability and anti-nutritional factors; young fish tolerate less than adults.
Insect mealBlack soldier fly at commercial scale in the EU and Asia; growth driven by feed-law approvals.[2]Cost per tonne of protein; volume still a rounding error against marine meal.
Single-cell proteinFermentation-grown; trials report 50% of fishmeal replaced in seabream diets.[2]Energy intensity and price; niche feeds first.
Algae & othersResearch stage, strongest as an omega-3 route rather than bulk protein.No volume story yet.
Why fishmeal keeps its floor

Substitution has already happened — the fishmeal share of aquafeed has fallen for decades — but the floor sits at functions, not percentages: larval and juvenile feeds, where digestibility and palatability are non-negotiable; broodstock nutrition; and the small-share, high-value lots where marine protein simply performs. Efficiency runs the other way too: FIFO ratios keep improving, and by-product-derived marine ingredients stretch the resource further.[3]

Next B2Raw sourcing →
Sources
  1. Howlader 2023 (PMC) — pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9982026 (accessed 2026-10-24)
  2. Liu 2020 (ScienceDirect) — www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352513420305627 (accessed 2026-10-24)
  3. Carvalho 2023 — insect and SCP meals as replacers (Aquaculture Reports) — www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352513423001444 (accessed 2026-10-24)
  4. Aquafeed news — SCP replaces 50% of fishmeal in seabream diets — www.aquafeed.com/newsroom/news/single-cell-protein-replaces-50-of-fishme (accessed 2026-10-24)
  5. Newton 2025 — nutrient FIFO (ScienceDirect) — www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0044848625002182 (accessed 2026-10-24)
  6. Global Seafood Alliance — FIFO ratios improve (2017) — www.globalseafood.org/advocate/aquaculture-input-efficiency-fifo (accessed 2026-10-24)