Chicken by-products in salmon feed: what does it mean for sustainability?
Good Fish, 29 October 2026
Lerøy recently announced that it will begin using poultry by-products as an ingredient in salmon feed. According to the company, this could reduce the climate impact of feed production while contributing to the circular use of by-products from the poultry sector. However, this development is also a response to the sharply rising prices of fishmeal and fish oil.
The availability of fishmeal and fish oil has been under increasing pressure worldwide due to growing demand from the aquaculture industry. At the same time, climate change is having a greater impact on key fisheries, such as the Peruvian anchovy fishery. Climate-related events such as El Niño regularly result in lower catches, limiting the availability of fishmeal and fish oil. As a consequence, prices for these raw materials have risen significantly in recent years.
See below for the development of fishmeal prices.
This trend raises important questions. Is it desirable to replace increasingly scarce marine resources with animal by-products from the poultry industry? And how should this trade-off be evaluated from a sustainability perspective?
What does this mean for the Seafood Guide (VISwijzer)?
Within the current Seafood Guide (VISwijzer )methodology, one of the factors assessed is the dependence on wild fish stocks for the production of aquaculture feed. When fishmeal or fish oil is replaced by alternative ingredients, pressure on wild fish populations may be reduced, potentially resulting in a more positive sustainability assessment.
At the same time, the current methodology does not yet include a specific assessment of terrestrial animal proteins, such as poultry meal or other poultry by-products. This raises an interesting question: does a reduction in the use of marine ingredients automatically lead to a lower overall sustainability impact?
Good Fish recognizes that the methodology will need to continue evolving in order to reflect developments such as these. In addition to pressure on fish stocks, other factors also play an important role, including climate impact, circularity, land use, biodiversity, and social acceptance.
For this reason, Good Fish is working together with WWF Germany, the developer of the methodology behind the VISwijzer, to explore how emerging developments such as the use of poultry by-products can be better incorporated into future assessments of aquaculture products.
A discussion that goes beyond fish feed
The debate surrounding chicken in salmon feed highlights how complex sustainability issues can be. Improvements in one area may raise new questions in another. Good Fish therefore believes that this topic should play a more prominent role in future aquaculture assessments. In the coming years, it will become clearer what role poultry by-products, insects, algae, and other alternative ingredients will play in the diets of farmed fish.
Want to learn more?
For readers interested in exploring this discussion in greater depth, you can find the full background article here.