IFFO

Background

Formerly known as the International Fishmeal and Fish Oil Organization, IFFO is a trade group that represents the interests of the marine ingredients industry.

Headquartered in London with offices in Beijing and Lima, IFFO’s origins date back to 1959. It represents fish farmers, producers, traders, feed companies, edible oil refiners and retailers.¹

Between them, IFFO’s 250+ members produce over 55 percent of global fishmeal and fish oil.² Made from organisms such as small fish, krill and algae, the majority of marine ingredients are used to make feed for farmed fish, with pig feed, pet food and nutraceuticals (supplements for humans) also important destinations.³

IFFO’s members include Mowi, Cermaq and Scottish Sea Farms. They are some of the world’s biggest farmers of salmon, which consumes 44 percent of the world’s fish oil, according to calculations made by DeSmog based on a 2022 report published by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization and a 2022 study.⁴ ⁵ ⁶

Members also include the three aquafeed companies that produce the majority of the world’s highly consolidated market for salmonid (salmon and trout) feed: BioMar, Cargill and Skretting, along with fish oil traders Olvea Fish Oils.⁷ ⁸

The principal objective of IFFO is “reputation management”.⁹ ¹⁰ It claims that the fishmeal and fish oil industry faces “much negative and unfair criticism” and works to counter “negative messaging, exaggeration and misinformation”.¹¹ ¹² ¹³

IFFO also aims to demonstrate that the marine ingredients industry is necessary for “feeding a growing world population, sustainably and responsibly”.¹⁴

To this end, it has engaged in lobbying, set up the Global Roundtable on Marine Ingredients, and established its own certification schemes, including the Global Standard for Responsible Supply (or IFFO RS, which was rebranded as MarinTrust in 2020).¹⁵ ¹⁶ ¹⁷

IFFO collects extensive fishmeal and fish oil production data from its members, but data is not shared publicly.¹⁸

Fishmeal and fish oil industry controversies

The fishmeal and fish oil industry’s use of wild-caught fish has led to criticism that it is an inefficient use of marine resources. It has also been accused of driving Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated fishing (IUU).¹⁹

Numerous reports have documented pollution and health problems around factory sites, as well as overfishing, primarily in countries in the Global South, such as in Peru, Vietnam and India.²⁰

In sub-Saharan Africa, several NGOs have documented ecological harms and the increased price of small fish, along with high pressure on overexploited small fish stocks in the Eastern Central Atlantic off West Africa.²¹ ²²

The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) found in 2022 that “the industry constitutes a threat to the livelihoods and food and nutrition security of local communities”.²³

Ecosystems, wildlife and marine food webs are also threatened by the marine ingredients industry, which uses the food source of wild carnivorous species, such as dolphins, sharks and tuna, as well as penguins and other marine birds, as studies have shown in South Africa and California.²⁴ ²⁵ ²⁶ ²⁷

Key narratives

Across its website and publications, IFFO uses a number of narratives to justify the sector’s operation and continued growth.

“Fishmeal and fish oil uses fish that are not eaten by humans”

According to IFFO, around 60 percent of fishmeal flour and fish oil globally is made from whole, fresh small oily species of fish, often described as “forage” or “pelagic” fish. The remaining 40 percent is made from fish byproducts or trimmings.²⁸

IFFO justifies the use of whole fish to make fishmeal on the grounds these fish would not otherwise be eaten directly by people. It maintains that the market for these fish is “weak, or in some cases non-existent”, and states that the claim fresh fish are being diverted from human diets to the FMFO industry is “completely incorrect” and a “misunderstanding”.²⁹

However, the industry uses a mix of seafood, which includes edible fish such as anchovies, sardines and mackerel.³⁰ One report estimated that 90 percent of fish turned into fishmeal and fish oil is food-grade fish.³¹

In Iceland, 75 percent of its substantial mackerel quota was used “for fishmeal” in a two month period in 2023, while the Norwegian fleet processed two thirds of their herring catch into fishmeal.³² ³³

The small fish species of sardinella, a vital source of micronutrients that is eaten throughout West Africa, are also a target for the fishmeal and fish oil industry, which has seen exponential growth in this region in the past decade.³⁴ ³⁵ ³⁶

“Fishmeal and fish oil is responsibly fished and sustainable”

IFFO’s technical director stated in 2022 that fisheries for small pelagic fish are “arguably among the most sustainable of all fisheries”.³⁷ On these grounds, IFFO argues that there is “no rationale for their removal from aquafeeds”.³⁸

IFFO aims to demonstrate the industry’s sustainability using certification. It set up the IFFO RS, now rebranded MarinTrust, for reduction (fishmeal and fish oil) fisheries’ in 2009. The certification programme is a member of IFFO, whose technical director and vice president both sit on the MarinTrust Governing Body Committee.³⁹ ⁴⁰ MarinTrust and IFFO also share the same address in London, according to their websites and filings on Companies House.⁴¹ ⁴²

While IFFO describes the fishmeal industry as the “most certified in the world”, its certification scheme has come under fire.⁴³

Kevin Fitzsimmons, a Professor of Agricultural-Biosystems Engineering at the University of Arizona, referred to MarinTrust as a “quasi in-house certification body” of IFFO in an October 2020 op-ed. He added that the MarinTrust standard is akin to “having the fox guard the henhouse”.⁴⁴

IFFO has maintained that the certification programme is an independent entity.⁴⁵ Marin Trust states that it is a “business-to business independent third-party-audited certification programme” which is a “separate entity [to IFFO] with its own governance structure, articles, purpose and budget”.⁴⁶

NGOs have also criticised the MarinTrust standard for being too lenient and discretionary, citing widespread overfishing and failings in fisheries management.⁴⁷ ⁴⁸

A 2023 review by the Sustainable Fisheries Partnership (SFP), an NGO which works closely with industry, found 18 percent of reduction fisheries analysed to be “poorly managed”.⁴⁹ A 2022 report of stock assessments and management shows that “overall sustainability performance in the reduction [fishmeal and fish oil] fisheries sector has continued to decrease since 2018”.⁵⁰

IFFO and the Sustainable Fisheries Partnership established the Global Roundtable for Marine Ingredients in 2021, with a focus on West Africa.⁵¹ While the Roundtable intends to “tackle a range of pressing environmental and social challenges”, it also aims to “increase availability of sustainable marine ingredients”.⁵²

“The fishmeal industry can help feed the world”

IFFO states that the marine ingredients industry can be part of the “blue food revolution” in which humans “move our reliance away from terrestrial ecosystems” and produce “more food from the sea”.⁵³

As part of this “revolution”, IFFO states that marine ingredients play “an essential role” in ensuring global food security, and that the marine ingredients industry plays a positive role in meeting [UN] sustainable development goals, according to a report from IFFO’s 2019 annual conference in Shanghai.⁵⁴ ⁵⁵

The claim that marine ingredients “feed the planet” is echoed by multinational salmon farmers including Lerøy, as well as IFFO members Skretting and Mowi.⁵⁶ ⁵⁷

However, a November 2020 study found that marine seafood farming’s food and nutrition claims to be “empirically inaccurate”. It stated that high-market value, carnivorous fish species in particular will “remain inaccessible to low-income consumers and the food-insecure”.⁵⁸

There is evidence that the marine ingredients industry is having the opposite effect, by contributing to food insecurity.

In sub-Saharan Africa – the site of fishmeal and fish oil factories in Mauritania, Senegal, The Gambia and the Congo – the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) found in 2022 that “the industry constitutes a threat to the livelihoods and food and nutrition security of local communities”.⁵⁹

A report from Partner Africa, commissioned by the industry-led Global Roundtable for Marine Ingredients found in 2023 that fishmeal factories in Mauritania and Senegal had caused food insecurity, undermining the availability, accessibility, acceptability and quality of food, especially for poorer people, and had lead to loss of work and income for women fish processors.⁶⁰

In the cases where seafood is farmed in the Global South, a 2022 paper points out that export of shrimps from Bangladesh is “notably at odds with the idea that aquaculture directly feeds the world’s poor”.⁶¹

“Fishmeal and fish oil are climate-friendly”

IFFO upholds that marine ingredients have a lower carbon footprint than other (land-based) animal feed ingredients, such as soya. On these grounds, it advocates for fishmeal and fish oil’s inclusion in feed to help salmon farmers (for example) to reduce their contribution to global warming.⁶²

However, there is evidence that farmed salmon will always be higher emitting than eating small pelagic fish directly, due to the high carbon footprint of ingredients in fish feed.⁶³ A 2022 paper in academic journal Nature ranked farmed salmon and trout among the higher emitting categories of seafood.⁶⁴

IFFO, which is a member of the Global Feed LIfe Cycle Association, now favours a focus on environmental impacts of marine ingredients through a ‘life cycle assessment’ metric as a way to measure marine ingredients sustainability, over the contested Fish In Fish Out ratio (see narrative “Fishmeal and fish oil optimise human nutrition” below).⁶⁵ ⁶⁶

“Fishmeal and fish oil is being used with ever greater efficiency”

To support the idea that its industry is sustainable, IFFO often stresses that the proportional inclusion of fishmeal and fish oil in aquafeed has declined – from 23 percent to 8 percent in the last 20 years to 2020.⁶⁷

However for salmon, which relies on fish oil, the use of marine ingredients in feed remains high. In Norway, it sat at 22.4 percent in 2022.⁶⁸ Aquaculture is also using an increasing share of fish oil compared to other industries, rising to 75 percent in 2016, with Atlantic salmon accounting for 60 percent.⁶⁹ ⁷⁰

Meanwhile, the volume of fishmeal and fish oil used in salmon feed is rising. In Norway, absolute weights included in salmon feed grew by nine percent between 2018 and 2020.⁷¹In January 2024, the NGO Feedback calculated that the Norwegian salmon industry drives the extraction of almost 2 million tonnes of whole wild fish every year.⁷²

UN Comtrade data visualized by Chatham House’s ResourceTrade.Earth database also shows that the absolute volume of marine ingredients traded grew in the five years to 2020.⁷³ Sixteen million tonnes of seafood was turned into fishmeal and fish oil in 2020, according to the FAO.⁷⁴

“Fishmeal and fish oil optimise human nutrition”

IFFO plays an active role in developing metrics that make the case for the efficiency of aquaculture in providing nutrients, protein and increased seafood production.

The organisation champions fishmeal and fish oil as “one of Nature’s best nutrient sources” and claims that aquaculture is the “most effective” use of the nutrients that small pelagic species contain.⁷⁵ ⁷⁶

But numerous studies demonstrate that farmed salmon is an inefficient way to produce nutritious seafood compared to eating small fish directly.⁷⁷

For example, farmed salmon is heavily marketed as the best source of Omega 3 when in reality other feed fish species (mackerel, herring, anchovy, sardine) are as good or better sources; a study by researchers at Lancaster University measuring Scottish salmon nutrient retention found that over half of the essential dietary minerals and fatty Omega-3 acids are lost when wild fish are fed to farmed salmon.⁷⁸

IFFO stresses that aquaculture has a multiplier effect. It calculates that 1 kilogram of fish meal and fish oil goes on to produce 5 kilograms of farmed fish (known as the Fish In Fish Out or Forage Fish Dependency ratio).⁷⁹ This is an average across all fed aquaculture species including species that are mostly herbivorous (e.g. tilapia).⁸⁰

Taken alone, salmon has one of the highest Fish In Fish Out ratios for fed-aquaculture species, at 1.87 according to a 20-year retrospective review of global aquaculture.⁸¹ IFFO places it significantly lower at 0.93.⁸² Sea bass and sea bream, also carnivorous farmed fish, have a FIFO value of 1.7, according to DeSmog’s calculations using a Feed Conversion Ratio of 2 and a fish meal and fish oil inclusion rate of 20 and four percent.⁸³ ⁸⁴

IFFO’s calculations were critiqued in a report from food and farming NGO Feedback, which says its FIFO calculations have the effect of underplaying the aquaculture industry’s reliance on fish oil, made from wild-caught fish.⁸⁵

Funding

IFFO’s membership fees range from $3,300 USD to more than $6,600 USD per year, depending on the type of membership and company size.⁸⁶ ⁸⁷

Based on its current membership, IFFO’s revenue from fees was at least $1.4 million USD in 2022.⁸⁸

According to IFFO’s 2021 annual report, it has a turnover of around $2 million USD.⁸⁹

Lobbying

According to IFFO, the organisation has focused its lobbying activities on the European Union “initially because it was a very significant market” and later “because of the strong influence EU legislation has had over other countries when adopting similar legislation”.⁹⁰

IFFO reports lobbying up to 2009 on issues including the traceability and the sustainability of feed fisheries outside Europe.⁹¹

Lobbying is also listed as a “duty” of IFFO board members.⁹²

IFFO cooperates closely with the UN’s FAO, where it is an accredited observer with “Specialized Consultative Status”.⁹³ ⁹⁴

IFFO does not appear in lobbying databases including the EU Transparency Register.

In 2022, IFFO’s annual report stated that its representatives contributed to discussions around nutrition, climate change, biodiversity, food security and fisheries management.⁹⁵

Affiliations

IFFO has over 250 member organisations, which include companies that produce and trade fishmeal and fish oil, as well as retailers, feed producers, industry associations, financial institutions as well as government and scientific organisations.⁹⁶

IFFO’s members include salmon companies Mowi, Cermaq and Scottish Sea Farms, as well as the companies that control the majority of the market for salmonid aquafeed: BioMar, U.S. food giant Cargill and Norwegian firms Mowi and Skretting (a subsidiary of Dutch firm Nutreco).⁹⁷

Other IFFO members Blumar Seafoods and Companía Pesquera Camanchaca S.A. – whose subsidiaries Blumar Salmon and Salmones Camanchaca, respectively – are two of the largest salmon companies in the world.⁹⁸ ⁹⁹ ¹⁰⁰ IFFO member Austral group is part of the same parent company, Austevoll, that owns world-leading salmon producer Lerøy.¹⁰¹

Traders and lobby groups are also members including the Federation of Oils, Seeds and Fats Associations (FOSFA) and the Global Organisation for EPA & DHA Omega-3s (GOED), which aims to “increase consumption of EPA and DHA omega-3s”, particularly from seafood.¹⁰² ¹⁰³ ¹⁰⁴

IFFO’s members also include pig feed manufacturers Hayashikane Sangyo, Guangdong Haid Group, MBP Solutions, Nutrifish, Woojin Feed, and Yi Show International Enterprise.

Current members of IFFO include:¹⁰⁵