New Cargill fish centre to focus on nutrition

It will serve as a research hub of internationally-renowned experts from EWOS and Cargill, who will focus on developing functional fish diets and studying diseases that affect farmed salmon in Chile and other countries focused on aquaculture.

Create tools to combat 2 major health issues for salmon

Through the Cargill investment and the support of Corfo, a Chilean developmental agency, the innovation centre will have more than 30 scientists and aquaculture experts. As part of their research, they will create tools and additional controls to fight the 2 major health challenges in the salmon industry. The first being SRS, caused by a bacterium responsible for 79% of the mortality of salmon and the main reason for antibiotics use in Chile. The second, Caligidosis, caused by Caligus or ‘sea lice’, a parasite that attaches to salmon skin, affecting its health. These diseases have contributed to significant fish industry sector losses.

Increasing fish research by 30%

With this investment, the Cargill Innovation Center in Chile will be able to conduct 4-5 times more studies than before, increasing the global capacity for fish health research by 30%.

“Having our own fish health centre will accelerate our product development programmes, allowing us to quickly develop new customer solutions,” said Einar Wathne, president, Cargill Aqua Nutrition. “We will be able to dig much deeper into the primary diseases and combat the risks they create for salmon producers, and also apply our learnings across multiple species of fish.”

“Proper fish nutrition is an excellent tool to help control disease,” said Simon Wadsworth, global fish health manager for Cargill Aqua Nutrition. “A fish consumes some 30,000 pellets in its lifetime and that means there are the same number of opportunities to manage the specimens – with no manipulation – to help the sustainability of the industry.”