From waste to food - sustainable exploitation of farmed lumpfish

The aim of "Lumpfish4Food" has been to obtain the necessary knowledge for a sustainable utilization of farmed lumpfish. To succeed with this aim, we have looked at the entire value chain. The welfare of lumpfish before slaughter was investigated and the results showed that raking and transportation led to clear but temporary effects on both primary and secondary stress responses. The nutritional content of the fish has been investigated and shows, among other things, a good amino acid profile, and high values ??of B12 and vitamin D, in addition to low values ??of environmental toxins. Various processing trials have been carried out with the fish, including formulated fish products (farce). The lumpfish proved to have low water holding capacity, and impaired gelation properties of lumpfish muscle and thus not suitable as a farce product product on its own. Freezing trials suggest using rapid freezing and thawing, freezing storage at -35 C, and glazing and packaging to maintain the quality of the .lumpfish. When it comes to regulatory and economic investigations in the project, they reveal major challenges with the use of lumpfish in farming and a socio-economic analysis shows that it is difficult to justify the benefits in relation to the animal health challenges the use represents due to a lack of documentation on the effect. Extensive product testing has been carried out with the lumpfish in South Korea and Vietnam. Industry actors in South Korea did not like anything with the fish, neither the taste, appearance nor texture. In Vietnam, the fish was slightly better assessed in terms of taste and texture, but both markets expressed concern about profitability due to the low fillet yield in the fish, and the unpleasant fact that the fish had been used to eat lice. In addition, various hydrolysis experiments have been carried out on lumpfish to make a protein powder and experiments showed that by pre-treating lumpfish with lye before enzymatic hydrolysis, the protein content in the final product is increased from 75 to 92 per cent. The overall results show that farmed lumpfish with the size 400-500 grams (size they stop eating lice) are challenging to utilize directly for human consumption.

The main goal of this project was to find sustainable solutions for the after-use of farmed lumpfish. According to the "food first" principle, we wanted to explore the possibilities to serve this fish for human consumption. Thus, our research focus have been devoted to how this fish can be gathered and transported without harming the fish, revealing the nutritional content, how they can be processed and precerved. In addition, we have looked at regulatory aspects, economic cost-benefit analysis and thorough market testing in South Korea and Vietnam. Also, a protein powder have been made aiming to find the best way to make a high quality protein powder. All this research are already publiched or are in submission for scientific publishing so that all research results will be availble for all. Further, a workshop in Vietnam with industrial actors in Vietnam and Norway, in addition to researchers, gathered and disgussed the results and future possibilites. The market results do however reveal limited possibilities to serve the fish whole for human consumption, thus reseach of other options need to be conducted. The sustainable after-use of farmed lumpfish is still not solved, but a lot of valuable research have now been conducted that can be taken into account when looking into other possible solutions.

Lumpfish is Norways 3rd most valuable farmed species, after salmon and trout. In 2018, 32 million individuals were farmed, at a value of 640 million NOK (Waatevik, 2019).The lumpfish is produced as a cleaner fish, meaning that is it eats sea lice of the salmon. Thus, it has become an important weapon in the battle against sea lice - one of the salmon industries’ main challenges for image and further growth. Re-use of the lumpfish as cleanerfish is not an option as the lumpfish stops eating lice when it reaches maturity at about 18 months. There are also regulative restrictions prohibiting relocation of fish to prevent the spread of diseases. Thus, the lumpfish is removed from the fishnets with the salmon and slaughtered. Some salmon producers manage to get 2.5 NOK for the silage produced on the lumpfish, others report that they have to pay to get rid of the lumpfish as waste. In 2018, about 12.800 tons of lumpfish (given 32 mill fish at about 0,5 kilo) were produced, all ending as silage or waste. This raises social , economic and environmental concerns, and not least ethical considerations related to treating the lumpfish as waste and not food. The main aim of the project is to provide the knowledge necessary to turn farmed lumpfish from waste to food for human consumption in post lice eating stage. Lumpfish4Food will attain knowledge and address and solve challenges related to market, animal welfare through collection and sorting, nutritional content, processing methods, shelf-life, total biomass utilization, logistics, regulatory aspects and profitability through the whole value chain. The value-chain approach is important as the different aspects of innovation depend on information and solutions from other levels in the value chain. A secondary objective is to reveal solutions for downgraded raw material not suited for food, e.g. processing of high value products using bioprocessing methods, e.g. producing marine collagen poweder.