In this excerpt from "Every Last Fish: A Deep Dive into the World of Fishes and Fishing" (Granta Books, 2025), journalist and author Rose George looks at how vast quantities of staple fish are taken from the sea off West Africa and turned into fishmeal for farming in Europe and China, instead of ending up on the plates of people in Africa.
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Products derived from fish turn up everywhere. Guanine, an ingredient produced from fish scales, is found in bath foam, perfume, nail products, shampoo, skincare products, and lipstick. Fishes can become gelatine, glue, and squalene. They can be in your dietary supplements or your glass of wine: isinglass, derived from dried fish air bladders, is used in wine-making.
Fishmeal is a sandy grubby powder that is worth billions. Minks eat it. Pigs eat it. Cattle eat it. Fishes eat it. It is also an ingredient in fertilizer and pet food. Fishmeal is part of a huge silent industry of fish by-products that used to be known as FMFO (fishmeal and fish oil) and has now been rebranded by the industry association as 'marine ingredients', a vague term that covers a broad range of fish-derived products, most of which are never noticed.
Workers loading crates of sardinella into a truck in Senegal. (Image credit: Bloomberg via Getty Images)
American pets may also find themselves eating fish liver and glandular meal, made from dried complete fish viscera; more general fish by-products, which are 'non-rendered, clean, undecomposed portions of fish (such as, although not limited to, heads, fins, tails, ends, skin, bone and viscera)'; or condensed fish protein digest, the 'condensed enzymatic digest of clean undecomposed whole fish or fish cuttings using the enzyme hydrolysis process'.
Take the meat and the prized flesh, and the rest can be reduced or diverted to other uses. That is the theory. It is not what happens in West Africa.
China uses nearly half of all FMFO, but then China uses most of everything. Europe also takes and takes. Spain imports the most fish oil from Senegal, and France takes 70 per cent of Mauritania's.
Fishing sustains millions of people in Senegal, yet much of what is caught is exported abroad. (Image credit: Anadolu via Getty Images)
Although noting 'a surprising lack of traceability and transparency regarding the origin and supply chain of farmed seafood products', the foundation linked plenty of reputable European retailers to FMFO supply chains that may use West African fish. For example: Sainsbury's, ALDI, Lidl, and Marks & Spencer in the UK; Auchan, Groupe Casino, Monoprix, and Système U in France (that is a full house of big French supermarkets); all the German ALDIs; and Mercadona in Spain. Sainsbury's, Marks & Spencer, and Mercadona have said they don't use West African FMFO in their seafood products, but how will they know?
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It is true — Europeans are using fish that West Africans could eat — and yet it is not all the truth. In Senegal, The Gambia, Mauritania, local fishermen supply fishmeal factories because the factories pay better. In Senegal, a fisheries union official tells me that there are too many pirogues. They are chasing smaller and smaller fish to sell to the factories. It is unsustainable.
Rubbish, said Francisco Marí of Bread for the World at the CAOPA [African Confederation of Professional Organisations of Artisanal Fisheries] workshop. 'It's just for prawns and salmon — they are not necessary foods; it's a luxury. It's not enough for us to have 10—15 per cent of fish to feed salmon and prawns. Indirectly, we are eating your fish. It's not essential for the alimentation of the US or Japan. We are taking your fish to feed a luxury product that we don't need.'
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Oneworld Publications Every Last Fish: a Deep Dive Into Everything They Do for Us and We Do to ThemIn Every Last Fish, Rose George dives into these questions by exploring the vast industries that support our appetite for fish sticks and salmon burgers, and the colossal illegal fishing trade whose practices and standards are unmonitored and often dangerous. Journeying to the bottom of the ocean and back, she examines the machinations of this $200 billion food system — one that’s growing rapidly even as fish populations disappear.
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