Wheels Within Wheels - Corn Price Spike Puts Extra Pressure On Remaining Anchovy Fisheries
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Just a few years ago no one outside of the fish oil industry really paid much attention to anchovies and they were lumped together with other unloved fish under the unappetising label "industrial fish". "It covers all the stuff we don't consume directly. We caught 18m tonnes of industrial fish last year, which represents 20% of all fish caught worldwide," says Gorjan Nikolik, associate director of animal protein at Rabobank.
These fish are caught in massive quantities, dried, minced and ground down into fish meal [a brown powder made mostly from fish bones and fish offal] and fish oil [which is extracted from the tissues of oily fish].
"After two years of declining prices, fish meal and fish oil are becoming expensive again. And people are now paying attention," says Nikolik from his office in Utrecht, the Netherlands' fourth city. He says the price of fish oil has increased from $1,500 (£950) a tonne at the beginning of the year to $2,000 per tonne this month; fish meal has jumped from $1,300 a tonne to a record $1,700.
The price is rising due to the growth in farmed fish [mostly salmon and prawns], which feed on them, and the substitition of fish meal as animal feed because corn has become too expensive: the corn price has hit a record high as a result of the severe drought in the US.
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2012/aug/24/anchovy-price-leap-food-industry-chain
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