Controlling Quality in Fish Oil Production (Fish Oil Producers Confront a Sea of QC Issues)

Solveig Hellebust, vice president of human relations and communications at Pronova BioPharma ASA, said IMARPE (Instituto del Mar del Per) monitors fishing very thoroughly. IMARPE, established in 1963 by the Peruvian government, has verified the anchovy population used for fishmeal and fish oil is in good biological shape.

Andrew Jackson, technical director if the International Fishmeal and Fish Oil Organisation (IFFO), conceded the whole sustainability issue is of growing importance, but agreed increasing efforts are being made to demonstrate this. "The two biggest fisheries for fish oil are the South American anchovy fishery, principally in Peru, and the menhaden fishery in the United States," he echoed. "Both these fisheries are very tightly managed and the fish stocks are currently in very good shape."

The fish commonly used for fish oil production include species such as anchovies, sardine and mackerel. Oceans Alive and ED rank anchovy, mackerel and sardine among its eco-best. Fish in danger of over-fishing include species more commonly served at restaurants, such as certain types of wild salmon, sea bass and tuna. However, salmon oil supplements tend to be sourced from farmed salmon, which can be more easily controlled for eco-factors including sustainability and even contaminants.

"In farming, we have a high focus on traceability and contaminant analyses of both feed and salmon produced in the whole value change from egg to harvest salmon," noted Knut Erik Gulbrandsen, Marine Harvest Ingredients. "For industrial fish, you have no traceability and must build up records from batch to batch of contaminants."

Gulbrandsen stressed traceability is a big factor in markets where there are many hands in the proverbial pot, including fisheries, refiners, importers, exporters and other manufacturing partners. One of the issues is degradation, which is most often due to oxidation. The nature of DHA and EPA is their long-chain structure, which is both good and bad. The long, polyunsaturated chain is key to the health benefits of EPA and DHA, but this structure also renders it susceptible to oxidation. As Gulbrandsen puts it, "No product, in my understanding, will be better than the starting point." This is why he touts traceability and control over all steps in the process of a finished product.