Products

Wet reduction of menhaden yields three products:  fish meal, fish oil, and condensed fish solubles. Menhaden meal is a valuable ingredient for animal feed and the pet food industry.  The aquaculture industry is heavily dependent on fish meal to improve feed efficiency and produce maximum growth rates.  Approximately 70% of the fish meal production stays in the US .  

Menhaden oil actually has two forms, crude oil which is unrefined, and refined oil which is deodorized and suitable for human consumption.   Roughly 80% of the crude oil produced from reduction is used in foreign aquaculture and the other  20% is used in the domestic beef industry.  Historically, refined oil has been used in edible products in Europe .  Refined menhaden oil  was approved for human use in the US by the US FDA in 1997 as a nutrition supplement and food additive.   Refined oil is blended and hydrogenated with other fats for cooking oils, shortening, margarine, and other products.  In recent years, about 50% of the refined oil is used in the domestic pet food production with the rest in non-consumptive products such as paints, plastics, resins, and cosmetics.  

Fish solubles are used to fortify fish meal in feed formulas and to increase nutrition in the aquaculture industry.  Roughly 50% of the total soluble production remains in domestic aquaculture and fertilizer markets.  The remaining 50% is exported for foreign aquaculture production.

The value and price of reduction fishery products varys greatly from year to year, primarily due to the worldwide supply-and-demand for industrial fisheries products, and competition with other products such as corn and soybeans, and palm and canola oils.