Salmon Feed Welfare: How Ingredient Choices Affect Wild Fish and Farmed Fish Wellbeing

The ingredients in farmed salmon feed have major welfare implications — both for the wild fish caught to make fishmeal and for the farmed salmon eating it. Sustainable feed alternatives are transforming salmon welfare chains.

Key Facts

Farmed salmon require high-protein, high-fat diets historically met by fishmeal and fish oil from wild-caught forage fish
Producing 1 kg of farmed salmon requires approximately 1–2 kg of wild fish in fishmeal — pressuring small pelagic fish populations
Forage fish like anchovies, sardines, and sand eels are ecologically critical prey for seabirds, marine mammals, and larger fish
Alternative protein sources including insect meal, algal oil, and single-cell protein are increasingly replacing wild fish in salmon feed
Nutritional deficiencies from poorly formulated feed alternatives can compromise farmed salmon immune function and welfare
Algal-derived omega-3 oils provide EPA and DHA equivalent to fish oil without wild fish capture welfare impacts

Welfare Considerations

Salmon feed welfare operates at two levels. Wild fish caught for fishmeal production — anchovies, herrings, capelin — experience welfare harms from capture, crowding, and asphyxiation aboard fishing vessels, with billions of individuals affected annually. Reducing fishmeal use in salmon feed directly reduces this welfare harm. For farmed salmon, feed quality determines immune function, disease resistance, and growth — poor-quality or nutrient-deficient feed causes welfare-significant health problems. Insect meal (from black soldier fly larvae) is becoming a mainstream salmon feed ingredient — it has good nutritional profile and can be produced on food waste. Algal oil provides long-chain omega-3s without the wild-fish capture chain. Certification schemes increasingly assess feed sustainability and nutritional quality as part of farmed salmon welfare audits. Consumers choosing certified salmon support feed ingredient improvement.

What You Can Do

Choose farmed salmon certified by ASC or equivalent schemes that include feed sustainability criteria
Support aquafeed companies developing insect meal and algal oil alternatives to wild-fish fishmeal
Advocate for fishing regulations protecting forage fish populations that form the base of the marine food web
Contact salmon brands to ask whether they are reducing fishmeal and fish oil in their feed formulations