Aquaculture accounts for 46% of the world’s fish production, emphasized the US biotech company AquaBounty Technologies.
As background: aquaculture is the cultivation of aquatic organisms such as fish, shellfish, crustaceans and aquatic plants. It is the cultivation of fresh or salt water species under controlled conditions, as an alternative to the commercial collection of wild species of aquatic organisms.
According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), aquaculture was a $250 billion industry in 2018, and AquaBounty Technologies is targeting the $17 billion salmon farming segment of that industry.
While the growing demand for fish protein cannot be met by traditional capture fisheries, the FAO states that more than 90% of the world’s fisheries are fully exploited or overexploited.
AquaBounty Technologies indicates that total world capture fisheries production has been relatively stable since the late 1980s, with catches typically fluctuating between 86 million metric tons and 93 million metric tons per year, reaching 96 million metric tons. metric tons in 2018.
In contrast, over the same period, fish production through aquaculture has grown from 14 million metric tons to a level of 82 million metric tons in 2018 and now accounts for 46% of global fish production.
Feeding the growing population and meeting the demand for fish protein will require aquaculture production to almost double by 2050.
Aquaculture
According to the FAO, the world population is expected to exceed 9 billion people by 2050, or a growth of approximately 26% in the next 28 years.
Along with this increase is a growing middle class with more disposable income, which is driving increased demand for protein food sources. And according to the FAO, global fish consumption has been growing faster than all other animal protein foods.
AquaBounty is a leader in the field of land-based aquaculture and the use of technology to improve its productivity and sustainability.
Its goal is to ensure the availability of high-quality seafood to meet growing global consumer demand, while also addressing critical production constraints in one of the most popular farmed species.
In particular, their GM Atlantic salmon is based on proprietary salmon genetics and grows to harvest size faster than conventional Atlantic salmon.
Their salmon was approved for production, sale and consumption in the United States on November 19, 2015 by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
This was followed by an approval from Health Canada for the production, sale and consumption of its salmon in Canada on May 19, 2016 and an approval from the National Technical Biosafety Commission for the sale and consumption of its salmon in Brazil on May 12, 2016. May 2016.
