Use of Soybean Meal in the Diets of Non-Salmonid Marine Fish

For several years, there has been continuing interest in identifying and developing ingredients as alternatives to fish meal for use within aquafeeds (Hardy, 1995; Tacon et al., 1998). Originally, the impetus for this was the often-variable nature of the price and supply of fish meal of suitably high quality for the aquafeed industry. Recently, however, the concern raised about the negative impact of fish meal production on global fish stocks has heightened this interest (Naylor et al., 2000). Among the ingredients being investigated as alternatives to fish meal, the products derived from soybeans (Glycine max L.) are some of the most promising (Lim et al., 1998; Hardy, 1999; Storebakken et al., 2000; Swick, 2002) because of the security of supply, price and protein/amino acid composition. According to Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations statistics, global soybean meal production has increased from about 15 million tons in 1961 to about 107 million tons in 2001, whereas fish meal production has remained fairly static at 5 to 7 million tons (Figure 1) and is expected to remain at these levels for the foreseeable future.