Fish farm feed warning

BLENHEIM - One of the nation's biggest fish farmers, Nelson-based New Zealand King Salmon, says it will continue to feed its Marlborough farmed salmon animal byproducts, despite a warning about disease risks.

Treaty of Waitangi Fisheries Commission member Dr John Mitchell told the commission's annual meeting in Wellington last week that fish could no longer be fed any food derived from beef, sheep, pork or chicken industry byproducts because of the danger of cross-species infection of transmissible spongioform encephalopathy (TSE) diseases.

One such disease is a human variant, Creutzfeld-Jacob Disease, which infects humans who have eaten infected nerve tissue in the meat of cows suffering from bovine spongioform encephalopathy (BSE), also called mad cow disease.

Dr Mitchell warned that New Zealand's farmed seafood could legally be rejected by European countries if farmers could not prove they met European Union health regulations.

New Zealand's aquaculture exports earned about $200 million in the past year.

The concerns were with the food fed to cage-reared salmon, snapper and flounder.

"They had better be pretty damn sure they are using fish-meal ... and clean fish-meal at that," he said.

There were also huge concerns after the dioxin scandals in Belgium, where the toxin was allowed to penetrate foods.

New Zealand marine farm managers should ensure that oil, diesel and other fuels could not escape from vessels and machines operating around where the fish were growing, because many of those fuels carried dioxins and other toxic chemicals.

King Salmon chief executive Paul Steere said the company had no qualms about its feed. It got its salmon feed from a variety of sources, all of which met international standards and regulations.

A small amount of meat and bone-based additives were included in the salmon food and were used for added protein.

King Salmon imported a lot of its salmon food and food ingredients from other countries, including South America and Australia.

Mr Steere said that during a biotoxin scare in Europe a couple of years ago, all King Salmon's feed components had been checked.

King Salmon continued to monitor any developments with feed-supply companies.

- NZPA