Fish Waste for Profit — Not Pollution
GEORGE M. PIGOTT, Associate Professor
Institute for Food Science and Technology
University of Washington
Seattle, Washington
INTRODUCTION
Food—starvation-waste—pollution-land and water! Utter one of these words
today and you implicate them all. Summed up they spell "Man's survival on earth".
For many years the scientific community has been predicting a major disaster in the
world due to shortage of proper foods. However, the producing areas of the world
were so busy with their own problems, that of taking from the earth, that the cries
went unheeded.
A primary product needed in solving the human food shortage is protein, more
particularly animal protein. Some two-thirds of the world's population is deficient in
this material and there is little hope that agriculture alone can supply the needs and
time to prevent major disaster.
The world is looking to the marine resources for help in the solution of this
animal protein deficiency, since the oceans represent a large, untapped source of
high-quality of animal protein. It is interesting to note (Figure 1) that the world is
feeding an increasing amount of marine food to animals (a much more inefficient
utilization of protein for humans) at the expense of decreasing the relative amount
fed to humans. Whereas in 1958, we used approximately one-sixth of the world's fish
catch for animals, today we use about one-third for this purpose. The situation in the
United States is even more unbalanced (Figure 2) in that well over fifty percent of
the fishery products consumed is by animals. Furthermore, as shown in Figure 2, we
are importing approximately the same amount of fish for non-human use as we are
producing in the total United States catch. This trend cannot continue! The source
of fish meal that comes from other countries will decrease as these countries raise
their standards of living, both through raising food animals and utilizing what is now
"fish meal for animals" in forms that are acceptable to humans.
There are large untapped sources of protein from the sea that must be
exploited in the future. On the other hand, the waste from plants presently
processing edible fish represents another source of raw material. At the present time
up to 50 percent of all edible fish taken from the sea is discarded as waste. This
ranges from some 35 percent waste for salmon to as high as 80 percent for shellfish.
This loss of a much needed food product is contributing to the pollution in our
inland waters, both in suspended and dissolved solids. So we technologists and
engineers in the food industry, and more specifically in today's discussion, the
seafood industry, have our work cut out for us—utilize waste and thereby do our part
in feeding mankind and minimizing pollution from waste disposal.
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