Swedish scientists informed that aquaculture takes considerably more wild fish to feed the farmed fish than what you get out of the production, generally by a two-to-one ratio; the caught wild fish ground down to fishmeal or fish oil. Professor Eva Brännäs of the Umeå branch of the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU) explained to the Swedish Radio, explained that this is certainly not sustainable, and so there is an urgent need of alternatives.
To find such alternatives Eva is moving ahead with experiments to feed farmed char on a mix of meal from farmed mussels and scrap fish and a new feedstuff consisting of fungi grown in a southwest Swedish pulp mill. It has been found that spent cooking liquor from sulfite pulping, so-called brown or red liquor, otherwise commonly utilised to produce alcohol or heating, can also be used to grow zygote fungi.
According to Eva the fungi, feeding on the sugar content of the liquor, quickly form lumps the size of grains of rice, rich in protein and omega-3 fatty acids. She told that test results have proved the fungi to be excellent food for fish. A pilot installation has been built at the Säffle pulp mill in southwestern Sweden, and hopes are that it will produce some 100 kilos of the fungi within a year, the goal set at 4,000-5,000 tonnes in three years.
