Sunday, March 20, 2005
Why Do We Feed our Salmon Chickens?
HuH?
If you eat farmed salmon in New Zealand (fresh or smoked) then you are eating fish that have been fed on a diet of ground up chicken feathers ("feathermeal"). So why do we feed salmon chickens?
The feed is formulated to match the natural diet of salmon in the wild. Salmon are carnivores so a certain percentage of the feed is animal protein. This is where the story starts to go wobbly. In the real world this would be fish protein. In the farmed salmon world its acombination of fish protein and sterilised, ground up chicken feathers - a bi-product from the poultry industry.
This is a Good Idea?
BSE demonstrated that if you mess about with the natural diet of animals unpredictable things can happen. You would have presumed that as a result every commercial feed manufacturer would have gone back to have a very close look at their recipes. Some of them even changed their recipes like the people who were putting cows into chicken feed who decided that maybe that wasn't such a good idea in the UK (unfortunately not in New Zealand - see my next blog "why do we feed our chickens cows?"). It's interesting to note that when defending the use of feathermeal we are told that its safe because its sterile. The blood and bone that went into the cow feed in the UK was sterilised and it made no difference - the prions that cause BSE are not neutralised by sterilisation.
So Why Do We Feed our Salmon Chickens?
Because: (The following are all direct quotes from Press Statements issued by the Salmon companies in response to the "outing" of their salmon feed)
"Feathermeal has been used in New Zealand salmon feed for the last 20 years."
"It is currently used specifically in Canada, Chile, Australia and New Zealand."
"It provides a less expensive source of good quality protein by comparison with fishmeal."
If you eat farmed salmon in New Zealand (fresh or smoked) then you are eating fish that have been fed on a diet of ground up chicken feathers ("feathermeal"). So why do we feed salmon chickens?
The feed is formulated to match the natural diet of salmon in the wild. Salmon are carnivores so a certain percentage of the feed is animal protein. This is where the story starts to go wobbly. In the real world this would be fish protein. In the farmed salmon world its acombination of fish protein and sterilised, ground up chicken feathers - a bi-product from the poultry industry.
This is a Good Idea?
BSE demonstrated that if you mess about with the natural diet of animals unpredictable things can happen. You would have presumed that as a result every commercial feed manufacturer would have gone back to have a very close look at their recipes. Some of them even changed their recipes like the people who were putting cows into chicken feed who decided that maybe that wasn't such a good idea in the UK (unfortunately not in New Zealand - see my next blog "why do we feed our chickens cows?"). It's interesting to note that when defending the use of feathermeal we are told that its safe because its sterile. The blood and bone that went into the cow feed in the UK was sterilised and it made no difference - the prions that cause BSE are not neutralised by sterilisation.
So Why Do We Feed our Salmon Chickens?
Because: (The following are all direct quotes from Press Statements issued by the Salmon companies in response to the "outing" of their salmon feed)
"Feathermeal has been used in New Zealand salmon feed for the last 20 years."
"It is currently used specifically in Canada, Chile, Australia and New Zealand."
"It provides a less expensive source of good quality protein by comparison with fishmeal."
# posted by Rongotai College English with KN @ 7:40 PM 
