The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently approved Taurine as an ingredient for fish feed providing fish farmers with more options to use plant-based ingredients in fish feeds while reducing the country’s reliance on feed made of other fish. The new approval in the United States opens up more options for feed, which are safe, sustainable, and provide a cost savings that may be passed on to consumers. The approval is a result of the joint NOAA-USDA Aquaculture Feeds Initiative that identified taurine as a key need in fish feeds. Dr. Ron Johnson, at NOAA’s Northwest Fisheries Science Center, and others demonstrated that taurine is an essential nutrient for some cold water marine fish, and developed dietary guidelines.
With this data, scientists and a group of nutritionists and industry representatives petitioned the FDA to allow taurine as an ingredient in fish feed. With FDA’s approval of taurine, aquaculture feeds with plant ingredients could cost farmers less than half of what it costs to feed fish a fish based diet.
Source: NOAA
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