CSIRO Food Waste Barramundi Feed Trial

Key Findings

• This study assessed five food waste (FW) streams including: 1) fish offal + grain, 2) pub + restaurant, 3) bakery, 4) meat + bone meal and 5) vegetable + fruit.
• High FW inclusion of 67% improved weight gain of barramundi by 35% compared to the control. Similar growth performance was achieved with a 50:50 blend diet (control: 67% FW) containing 33.5% FW.
• The superior performance from FW diets may have arises from a few factors: the higher lipid:carbohydrate ratio achieved, higher dietary phosphorous and the possibility that the fish offal+grain FW was a more bioactive ingredient compared to the traditional protein ingredients. Reformulation of diets based on ingredient digestibility results is required to determine the main causal factor(s).
• Nutrient apparent digestibility of FW ingredients showed that protein and lipid from fish offal+grain, pub+restaurant and meat+bone meal were well utilised and so higher inclusions of pub + restaurant and meat + bone meal should be investigated.
• Conversely, bakery and vegetable+fruit FW were poorly digested by barramundi
• Partial replacement of traditional ingredients with FW can achieve similar or enhanced growth performance

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