Global Consumption: Farmed Fish Overtaking Wild

The announcement is made by Michael Miller, Bell Aquaculture President & COO, who says the WSJ referenced a report being prepared by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization. The same trend is found in the U.S./Great Lakes Region for yellow perch, as detailed in Food Engineering magazine, with Bell Aquaculture’s launch of the nation’s largest yellow perch farm. Plus, the same holds true for farmed salmon in the UK, according to The Times Online.

In the October 27th WSJ/Europe article, High-Tech Fish Farms Angle to Make Hard-to-Rear Cod the Next Salmon, "A millionaire dot-com executive turned fishing entrepreneur is pursuing the holy grail of industrial aquaculture — the Atlantic cod…This year, for the first time, humans will eat more farmed fish than wild fish, according to a report being prepared by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization."

October’s Food Engineering magazine reveals the same trend occurring in the U.S. in "A Real Fish Tale Profiling Michael Miller and Bell Aquaculture." Quoting FE: "The day when all fish for human consumption makes its way to a plate through a fish farm may arrive sooner rather than later…The United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization estimates 43% of world fishery production now comes from aquaculture [2006 data now being updated according the WSJ/Europe quoted above]. As a business executive with Turner Broadcasting System Inc., Michael Miller saw it coming. Miller’s responsibilities included overseeing some programming, and when some show producers previewed a 1994 segment on aquaculture for him, Miller was hooked."

In the UK, the November 9 Times Online further elaborates on the farmed fish trend in "Consumption by British Households of Scottish Farmed Salmon has Risen…" Quoting from The Times Online, "Scottish aquaculture, valued in excess of £400million in 2006, is now second only to the beef sector (£467million) and ahead of the sheep, pig and commercial fishing sectors.