Products

Wet reduction of menhaden yields three products:  fish meal, fish oil, and condensed fish solubles.  Menhaden meal is a valuable ingredient for animal feed and the pet food industry.  The aquaculture industry is heavily dependent on fish meal to improve feed efficiency and produce maximum growth rates.  Fish meal consumption in animal and aquaculture feeds varies significantly from year to year based on supply and prevailing prices.  In the past few years approximately 50-60% of the menhaden fish meal production is consumed in the US, while demand from Asia, particularly China is rapidly growing primarily due to the aquaculture feed segment.

Menhaden oil is available in its crude state for animal and aquaculture feeds or as a feedstock for further refined products.  The refining process steps include:

1. winterization (or fractionization) where the oil is chilled and the solid fraction, stearine, is filtered out;
2. alkalai refining where the free fatty acids are neutralized and removed;
3. bleaching where the color is reduced; and
4. deodorization which removes the odor causing bodies.

These refining steps allow the product to be used in human foods to allow the manufacturers to make a healthy functional claim on their line of products.  Roughly 75% of the crude oil is used in aquaculture feeds, both domestically (20%) and internationally (80%), another 10% is used in the domestic market for animal feeds, primarily beef, and the remaining 15% goes into further refining.  Refined menhaden oil was granted GRAS (generally recognized as safe) status by the FDA in 1997 which allows it to be sold for direct human consumption.  In recent years about 70% of the refined oil is used in the domestic pet food production and the rest goes into the human food ingredient market and in non-consumptive products such as paints and dyes.

Most of the fish solubles are added back to the meal fraction during the production process to enhance nutrient availability and to improve attractant properties particularly in aquaculture feeds.  Roughly 90% of the total soluble production is added back to the meal during the reduction process however some of it is further condensed and sold as a thick viscous liquid.  Roughly 85% of it is sold domestically as an organic fertilizer with the remaining 15% going into the international aquaculture feed industry as an attractant.  This is becoming more important as fish feed producers reduce the inclusion levels of fish meal and fish oil.

The value and price of reduction fishery products varies greatly from year to year, primarily due to the worldwide supply-and-demand for industrial fisheries products, and competition with other products such as corn and soybeans, and palm and canola oils and ultimately petroleum due to the advent of bio-diesels.