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Fishmeal is not always made from scraps. In parts of West Africa, factories buy whole, edible small fish—especially sardinella—and turn them into feed for farmed fish, livestock, pets and fertilizer. When an industrial plant can pay more than a local processor, catches that might have supplied households, markets and smoking businesses are diverted into an export supply chain.
That is the central conflict described by journalist Rose George: a global “marine ingredients” market can reward the fastest-paying buyer even when the same fish has greater food and livelihood value locally. The figures below come from George’s reported account, not a new peer-reviewed dataset, so they should be read as attributed estimates rather than independently measured totals.
What fishmeal is—and what “reduction fisheries” mean
The Food and Agriculture Organization definition quoted in George’s account calls fishmeal “the clean, ground, dried tissue of undecomposed whole fish or fish cuttings, either or both, without the extraction of part of the oil.” Making it normally involves cooking fish, pressing or separating liquids, drying the solids and grinding them into meal. Fish oil can be recovered as a separate product.
The industry often describes this as a way to use low-value fish or processing leftovers that people would not eat. That can be a legitimate use for heads, frames and trimmings. The dispute arises when factories buy whole fish that are suitable for human consumption. George reports that about 90% of the fish used for fishmeal are edible by people.
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Why edible fish are diverted from local food
Factories can pay more for the same catch
Industrial plants have access to export finance and large, continuous markets. Local processors—such as women who smoke, dry or salt fish—often buy in smaller quantities and lack comparable subsidies, credit and cold-storage capacity. “The fish processors tell me that they cannot compete with the prices that fish factories will pay for sardinella,” George writes.
For a boat owner, selling to a factory can therefore be the rational short-term choice, even if the decision reduces the supply available to nearby communities. Some Senegalese, Gambian and Mauritanian fishers do supply the plants for this reason. The resulting pressure is not simply a foreign-versus-local story: too many pirogues chasing limited stocks can push boats toward smaller fish, while the highest-paying buyer sets the incentive.
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The scale can be large enough to affect national supply
George’s account cites a report that one Gambian fishmeal factory used 40% of the country’s entire fish catch in a single year. It also reports that roughly half a million tonnes of wild fish caught in African waters are sent to Europe annually—fish that, in George’s calculation, could have fed 33 million Africans. Those estimates are presented in the account without an independent methodology for each calculation.
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| Reported figure | What it describes | Qualification |
|---|---|---|
| More than 5 million tonnes a year | Global fishmeal production | Reported by Live Science in 2026 from Rose George’s account |
| 500,000 tonnes a year | Wild fish caught in African waters and sent to Europe | George’s estimate, as reported by Live Science; not an independently measured dataset in the account |
| 33 million people | Potential food equivalent of that African catch | George’s calculation, reported by Live Science |
| 40% of one national catch | Share reportedly used by one Gambian factory in one year | Case cited in George’s account |
How the West African supply chain works
- Wild fish are landed. The account follows catches in Senegal, The Gambia and Mauritania, where small pelagic species such as sardinella are important to both ecosystems and coastal diets.
- A reduction plant buys the fish. The plant cooks, dries and grinds whole fish into meal and may extract oil. The output is sold as a concentrated protein or lipid ingredient rather than as food for people in the landing country.
- Marine ingredients cross borders. The account describes Chinese-owned factories and fleets operating in Mauritania and exports moving to Europe. China is reported to use nearly half of all fishmeal and fish oil, while France receives 70% of Mauritania’s fish oil.
- Feed manufacturers use the products. Fishmeal and fish oil can enter aquaculture feed, livestock feed, pet food and fertilizer. The final buyer may be far removed from the fishing community.
Traceability is a major weakness. The account reports that European Union illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) catch-document rules do not cover fishmeal. A document system that verifies seafood sold for direct consumption can therefore leave a gap when the same catch is rendered into an ingredient first.
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What investigations report about communities and ecosystems
A 2019 Changing Markets Foundation investigation, as summarized by George, found a recurring pattern in India, Vietnam and The Gambia: foreign factories arrive, take fish and pollute, followed by fishermen reporting fewer fish. That pattern is evidence of a repeated concern, not proof that every plant has identical impacts.
Removing large quantities of small pelagic fish can affect food webs as well as people. Sardinella and related species are prey for larger fish and are among the species that coastal households commonly process. When fleets expand and target progressively smaller fish, the ecological and economic risks compound: fewer fish are available for local processors, and the remaining stock may be harder and more expensive to catch.
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Is farmed salmon or prawns “eating” people’s fish?
There is no single feed recipe for all farmed fish or prawns, and the account does not establish that every farmed-fish product uses fishmeal or fish oil from West Africa. Some retailers have denied using West African marine ingredients. The defensible point is narrower: a documented supply chain can connect edible African fish to feed markets elsewhere, and weak traceability makes it difficult for buyers to verify the origin.
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| Pathway | Immediate output | Main food-security question |
|---|---|---|
| Whole edible fish sold to local processors | Food for households and domestic or regional markets; jobs in smoking, drying and trading | Can local buyers obtain enough fish at a price consumers can afford? |
| Whole fish reduced into meal and oil | Concentrated feed ingredients for aquaculture, livestock or pets | Does the added value of the later product exceed the lost direct food and local income? |
| Genuine processing byproducts reduced into meal | Feed or fertilizer from material unlikely to be sold as food | Can rules distinguish waste recovery from targeting edible fish? |
Why local processors lose even when they create food
- Working capital: factories can pay immediately and buy at industrial scale; small processors often finance purchases day by day.
- Infrastructure: reliable ice, cold storage, transport and electricity determine how much fish can be preserved for later sale.
- Market power: an export plant can aggregate landings and sell into international contracts, while a local trader faces fragmented demand.
- Policy imbalance: if factories receive investment incentives or cheap finance while artisanal processors do not, the nominally “free” market is not an equal contest.
These differences explain why higher factory prices do not automatically mean greater prosperity for fishing communities. Boat owners may earn more per landing while processors, consumers and workers who depend on local value-added businesses lose access to fish.
What would make the trade-off more accountable?
Any policy response has to distinguish waste recovery from reduction of whole edible fish. Practical tests include:
- Species and size rules: reserve fish that are important to local diets and set minimum sizes, seasons or quotas before reduction plants can buy.
- Full-chain traceability: record the vessel, landing site, species, quantity and end use for fishmeal and fish oil, not only for seafood sold whole.
- Local-processing access: provide credit, cold storage, hygienic smoking or drying facilities and market infrastructure so processors can compete for landings.
- Transparent impact checks: publish water, waste and emissions data and enforce penalties when plants pollute.
- Buyer responsibility: feed, seafood and pet-food companies should be able to identify the fishery and prove whether ingredients came from byproducts or targeted whole-fish catches.
These measures do not require eliminating fishmeal. They require making the opportunity cost visible: every tonne of edible fish sent to reduction is a tonne unavailable for direct consumption or local processing.
The bottom line for consumers and policymakers
Fishmeal can recycle genuine processing waste, but the West African cases described by Rose George concern a more consequential practice: buying whole, edible fish because global feed markets can pay more. The result is a contest over the same catch, with local food availability, artisanal livelihoods, ecological pressure and export value on different sides. The most credible safeguard is not a blanket claim that all aquaculture is harmful; it is verifiable origin data and rules that prevent feed demand from displacing essential food without scrutiny.
For the full investigation, see Rose George’s book Every Last Fish: A Deep Dive into the World of Fishes and Fishing, published by Granta Books.
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