Major salmon farmers introduce chicken feed despite consumer concerns

Investing.com -- Europe's largest salmon farming companies have started feeding chicken byproducts to their fish, ending a practice that supermarkets avoided for years due to concerns about consumer reaction.

Lerøy Seafood Group, one of Norway's largest salmon farmers and a Tesco supplier, said it has introduced chicken byproducts at all of its offshore salmon farms. Mowi, the world's biggest salmon producer supplying UK supermarkets including Sainsbury's and Asda, plans to introduce poultry-based feed at its farms in Norway and Scotland, according to people familiar with the matter.

Norway's Grieg Seafood introduced chicken meal and oil in July, while SalMar, the world's second-largest salmon producer, began testing poultry in feed in March.

"This is a very sensitive issue," said Margareth Øverland, professor of aquaculture nutrition at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences. "Consumers have historically been very sceptical. But the market seems to be more ready now."

The use of livestock byproducts as fish feed was banned in Britain until 2013 over concerns about disease spread, including bovine spongiform encephalopathy.

Salmon producers cite cost reduction and lower carbon emissions as reasons for the switch. The price of traditional fishmeal, made from wild fish, has nearly doubled over the past two years due to falling fish stocks and increased demand from China. Poultry feed costs less than half the price per tonne.

Some chicken used by Lerøy comes from Britain, according to the company's sustainability disclosures. These byproducts from British chicken farms are shipped to Norway for processing and fed to salmon, which are then exported to the UK.

Tesco said in 2021 it prohibited poultry-derived meal and oil in fish feed, while Waitrose said in 2024 it did not permit processed animal proteins in fish feed. Tesco did not respond to a request for comment about any policy change. Waitrose declined to comment.

The shift could benefit Britain's chicken industry. Alistair Collins, a director at animal byproducts processor J G Pears, said growing demand from salmon farmers is driving up the value of chicken remains. "Aquaculture has become an important market," he said.

This year's strong El Niño disrupted anchovy fishing off Peru, which normally produces a fifth of the world's fishmeal, intensifying the need for alternative protein sources. Salmon feed producers are expected to reduce their use of blue whiting this month after it lost its sustainability certification due to European countries failing to agree on quotas.

Jørgen Skeide, feed manager at Lerøy, said: "With the scale of our operation, we needed an alternative to fishmeal . . . poultry meal was the only raw material that checked all of these boxes."

Chicken byproducts include parts deemed not fit for human consumption, such as bone, liver and brain, though some parts like feathers are excluded.

Salmon farmers in Chile and Canada have used these byproducts for years. A 2026 study by food institute Nofima found that consumers in the UK and France thought it was "unnatural and disgusting" to feed salmon chicken, according to Florent Govaerts, a researcher at the organization.

Shoppers are unlikely to know whether salmon is chicken-fed as retailers are not legally required to list fish-feed ingredients on packaging.

Sainsbury's said poultry-derived ingredients were prohibited in feed for its own-label salmon but did not specify whether that applied to third-party brands. Asda did not respond to requests for comment.

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