The Mexican Government has pledged an investment of US$50-70 million in mariculture and infrastructure development. The federal and regional governments of Mexico have partnered with the established Offshore Mariculture Conference, held in Ensenada, Baja California, to promote this investment and commitment to the industry. Key themes of the conference will cover a wide variety of topics, case studies and practical applications. This includes all recent developments in offshore mariculture, the farming of finfish in Mexico, opportunities for the Mexican market, studies into processes at the breeding and hatchery level, traditional and innovative fish nutrition, marketing and value added opportunities for sustainably raised offshore fish, and more.

The 10th IFRM organized by IFIF in cooperation with the FAO brought together feed industry representatives and government officials from around the world to discuss critical issues facing the feed sector. “This meeting, yet again, proved to be an important opportunity for the global feed industry and feed regulators to discuss key issues for the feed and food chain, including Feed Safety Risk Management Strategies, as well as programs on capacity development for feed safety to implement the Codex Alimentarius requirements.”

Kofi Annan will be the keynote speaker of this year\'s AgriVision conference, which takes place in The Netherlands from June 13 to 15. Calling on his vast experience as former Secretary-General of the UN, chairman of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), chair of the Kofi Annan Foundation, member of The Elders and many other roles, he will address close to 400 leaders in the agrifood industry. This year\'s conference will provide a platform to discuss developments in agricultural technology, the pressing global public health issue of antimicrobial resistance and the importance of agricultural development for feeding a growing world population.

Scientists at Australia’s CSIRO have developed a microbial feed additive for prawns containing marine microorganisms that have been bred in captivity. In a large-scale field test, the additive-consuming black tiger prawns grew an average of 30 percent faster than their regular-food-eating counterparts, and were also healthier. Meanwhile, scientists at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science have developed and tested an alternative feed that consists entirely of plant-based ingredients. Researchers found that flesh of the fish raised on the plant-based diet has polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB) and mercury levels that are a hundred times lower than those found in fish consuming regular pellets containing wild-caught fish.

The F3 Fish-Free Feed Challenge was launched in November 2015 to encourage innovation of alternative ingredients for aquaculture feeds, improve the industry\'s sustainability and to reduce pressure on wild-caught fish to supply fishfeed components. So far, eight multi-national teams from around the world have qualified to participate in the competition. Contestants range from companies with their own mills and farms with multinational sales and hundreds of employees to start-up farms and ingredient companies with just a dozen employees. One of these smaller companies is Belgium-based TomAlgae, a manufacturer of micro-algae for use as a shrimp feed.

A leading fishmeal analyst believes that while limited supply and increasing demand may eventually cause 'tight' markets, global prices are likely to exhibit 'softness' over the next two years. Speaking before an audience of producers of alternatives at the recent Fish-Free Feed Challenge, Rabobank senior analyst Gorjan Nikolik said that a confluence of factors are driving the fishmeal market, principally, a recent rise in Peruvian anchovy supply after years of depressed stocks due to El Nino. “We think that if the Peruvian industry starts to recover because the El Nino is no longer there, the next near term will probably be around $1,200 to $1,700/ton."

The Fish 2.0 2017 business competition for sustainable seafood enterprises launched yesterday with a new track structure that will build seafood innovation networks in coastal regions around the world and create global networks around key opportunities in the seafood industry. “This new structure will ensure diversity among finalists and give investors a global perspective on emerging innovations in the seafood industry. It also begins to create regional networks that can support growing businesses, as well as global networks for innovators working on seafood’s biggest challenges.”

Alltech has released the results of their sixth annual Global Feed Survey, and it appears 2016 was a major mile marker for the global feed industry. For the first time, the world produced more than 1 billion metric tons of feed in a single year, and, interestingly, it did so with a 7 percent reduction in feed mills. Survey data was obtained from more than 30,000 feed mills in 141 countries, making this year’s analysis the company’s most robust to date. The results show that the U.S. and China are the top two countries, producing one-third of all animal feed, and that predominant growth came from the aquaculture sector among others.

The United States Aquaculture Society, National Aquaculture Association and North Central Regional Aquaculture Center are offering free access to the webinar entitled "Use of Veterinary Feed Directive Drugs in Aquaculture."

Joel G. Newman, President and CEO of the American Feed Industry Association, released a statement regarding Sonny Perdue as Secretary of Agriculture. \\\"AFIA works with USDA on a broad slate of issues such as trade and implementation of the farm bill. We look forward to working closely with the new agriculture secretary, assisting him and his staff on animal food-related topics, and how our industry relates to other agriculture sectors and to consumers. This will be particularly important as Congress, the administration and industry come together to draft and enact the new farm bill.\\\"

IFFO has published a position paper analyzing the forage fish dependency ratio (FFDR) to provide clear information on this complex debate. “There is often a lot of focus on the term FFDR in analyses of fed aquaculture’s environmental impact, but in reality the concept has little bearing on the harvest levels of forage fish populations although it was constructed to do exactly that.\"

French-Tunisian agri-tech startup nextProtein, which produces animal feedstock from insect larvae, has secured €1.3 million in fundraising to scale up its expanded operations in 2017. “I was struck by the scalability and sustainability of nextProtein’s model, leveraging the unused and otherwise useless inventory of organic waste to generate much needed protein to feed animals and supply organic fertilizer – all with almost no carbon footprint. Supporting them and investing in their business was an obvious choice.\"

The improvement of sea conditions after the impact of the El Nino phenomenon, and the changes in fishing regulations introduced by the Peruvian government, allow managers of a major fishmeal company to be optimistic this year. Manuel Salazar, general manager of Pesquera Diamante, expects that his company\'s sales and turnover will improve this year, from production of about 77,000 tonnes of fishmeal to about 150,000 tonnes in 2017.

Researchers at the Centre for Biological Research of the Northwest (CIBNOR), at its Unit in Nayarit (UNCIBNOR), have managed to reduce feeding costs by 50 per cent in tilapia (Oreochromis niloticus) fish farming, by adapting it to a biofloc system. \"The objective of the project has been to develop a multidisciplinary group of young doctors focused on solving in the medium and long term the problems that will face the repopulation of reservoirs and the cultivation of tilapia, initially in western Mexico and later at the national level.\"

At the 10th Aquafeed Horizons, Rafiq Ahmad, Industrial PhD candidate at Cargill Aqua Nutrition will explain how a study demonstrated that free amino acids and low molecular weight water-soluble peptides can replace moisture as a plasticizer in the extrusion process, offering the possibility to develop a new processing approach for the feed industry, serving multiple purposes, such as nutrient, plasticizer and binder in extruded fish feed.

Flint Hills Resources announced it will invest more than $50 million in its Fairmont, Neb. ethanol plant to install a new technology that will produce a high protein animal and fish feed ingredient from a portion of the plant’s distiller grains, a co-product of ethanol production. The high protein feed produced using MSC is a combination of corn gluten (protein) and spent yeast. It has an improved amino acid profile when compared to corn gluten meal produced at corn wet mills while also having a higher protein concentration than spent yeast alone. The MSC-produced feed will have at least 48 percent protein, making it an excellent ingredient for the aquaculture industry.

The IFFO RS Governance Board has ratified a proposal to review and enhance the IFFO RS program through the development of ‘Version 2.0’. The IFFO RS certification process includes two key components: the fishery assessment, and the factory assessment. The development of Version 2.0 includes a thorough review of both, and these are ready for Public Consultation for a period of 60 days beginning January 16th 2017. “We consider stakeholder involvement as very important for the development and credibility of the IFFO RS Certification Program. We would therefore welcome and encourage any comments or feedback regarding the revised fishery assessment criteria and the proposed factory audit criteria.\"

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is announcing a public hearing regarding FDA initiatives for enhancing the safety of foods (for humans and animals) imported into the United States. The hearing will focus on partnerships to improve safety capabilities through capacity building; partnerships that inform risk-based decisionmaking; partnerships that recognize commodity-specific export programs; and partnerships that recognize the robustness of a nation’s entire food safety system.

EUMOFA has released results from a study aimed at surveying and analyzing EU consumer attitudes and habits regarding fishery and aquaculture products. The main purpose of the study was to survey and analyze the two components of the fishery and aquaculture product (FAP) market, namely the supply, represented in this specific instance by retailers, and the demand, represented by consumers, and corroborate the analysis with further qualitative and quantitative data on consumption trends in all EU Member States.

Evy Vikene has been appointed as Marketing Manager of Skretting Global Salmon. In this position Evy will have a strong focus on development and coordination of global marketing activities in collaboration with Skretting salmon feed operations.