The European Market Observatory for fisheries and aquaculture (EUMOFA) is a market intelligence tool on the European Union fisheries and aquaculture sector, developed by the European Commission. It aims to increase market transparency and efficiency, analyses EU markets dynamics, and supports business decisions and policy-making.
EUMOFA enables direct monitoring of volumes, values and prices of fisheries and aquaculture products, from the first sale to retail stage, including imports and exports. Data are collected from EU countries, Iceland, Norway, United Kingdom and from EU institutions and updated every day.
EUMOFA has now released the 2020 edition of its Blue bioeconomy Report. The study aims to provide an updated overview of the European Union’s blue bioeconomy sector, focusing on cutting-edge applications of aquatic biomass by examining three topics:
- Integrated Multi-Trophic Aquaculture (IMTA)
There are two key goals of IMTA. These are environmental remediation of waste materials from finfish farming, and possible additional income associated with the added biomass of the other components. IMTA has obtained encouraging, albeit not commercial-scale, results in most of its work to date in the EU and worldwide, and has shown promising environmental and economic benefits. However, difficulties remain in encouraging established mainstream producers, such as salmon farms and offshore wind farms, to integrate the types of IMTA offered. - Innovative uses for fish rest raw material (RRM) in Denmark
In 2019, the total available volume of RRM (the potentially useful material that is removed from fish in order to prepare biomass for food use) in Denmark was between 530.000 and 540.000 tonnes. In Denmark it is mainly used for fishmeal and fish oil, animal feed, biogas, and indirect human consumption. The latter of these uses achieves the highest prices when utilised for products such as food additives or supplements (e.g. oil in Omega-3 capsules). However, efforts are increasingly being made to maximise the use of RRM and retrieve as much value as possible by processing it for human consumption. - Cell-plant technology and cellular mariculture
With growing interest in cellular mariculture as an approach to address public health, environmental, and animal welfare challenges, the concept of producing plant cell culture systems could represent a potential renewable source of valuable compounds, flavours, fragrances, and colorants. In the case of seafood produced from fish cell and tissue-cultures, it represents an emerging approach to address similar challenges faced by industrial aquaculture and marine capture systems. Cell-based seafood can combine developments in biomedical engineering and modern aquaculture techniques. Aquaculture techniques such as genetic modification and closed-system aquaculture have achieved significant gains in production that could pave the way for innovation in cell-based seafood production.
IMPAQT has the privilege to be referenced in this report (p9, p17, p47) as well as the IMPAQT deliverable D1.1. that can be found in the following link: Pilots description and reference case studies for IMTA