USSEC Korea recently conducted individual on-site visits to target flounder growers on Jeju Island.  These growers have shown a lack of understanding about the benefits of soy in terms of quality consistency of feeds, which has been one of the constraints of limiting the inclusion of soy in aqua feeds.  USSEC’s goal was to promote the benefits of soy by highlighting soy’s superiority over fish meal in quality consistency by discussing how soybean meal is less variable in contents of protein and amino acids and composition of amino acids than fish meal.  Such on-site visits help improve target fish growers’ acceptance to soy inclusion in fish feeds.
Information provided showed that the standard deviation of protein contents of soybean meal is 1.6 percent while that of fish meal is 6.3 percent.  This data on feedstuffs composition references a book published by the National Institute of Animal Science in Korea.  The target fish growers noted that consistency in quality of feeds can induce better growth performance and improved growth performance can shorten the period to reach market size, resulting in a decrease in production costs.