Fish-Meal & Toxic By-Product

"BEWARE of FISHMEAL" 

by Xenia Stavrinides

Fishmeal is a highly processed product containing high nitrogen. Fishmeal is a commercailly made fertilizer made from ground fish bones, offal, trimmings and fish manure.

 

Fish-meal is used as a soy substitute in many soy-free chicken feeds. It contains very high concentration of purine which forms uric acid. 

 

Commercially made Fish-meal may contain high levels of mercury and radiation which can affect the health of chickens and the quality of the eggs and poultry. The very high concentrations of purine (meaning "Pure Urine") can cause the rise of uric acid in chickens and contribute to rheumatic disease. The concentrated levels of nitrogen inherit in fish-meal can cause kidney disease and renal failure in chickens. What does this mean for the consumer?  Contaminated fish meal can pass monomethyl mercury and organohalogen pollutants to poultry, eggs and meat. Organohalogen pollutants can also be passed on in the fat. 

 

Most farmers raise commercial, fast growing strains of "meat" chickens for poultry, so the chickens either die from congestive heart failure or are slaughtered before they reach 9-weeks of age. In addition, those raising commercial layer hens which are known to produce an inflated amount of eggs, often use such cheap stimulants to lower the cost of production and to artificially inflate the cost of the product.

 

There are several problems associated with feeding poultry fish-meal.  It can lower the life expectancy of chickens; but since most commercial strains of layer chickens are slaughtered and replaced after just 2-years, those using fish-meal enjoy large profits by marketing "SOY-FREE EGGS". 

 

Fish-meal is not a natural fodder-feed for chickens. It does not benefit the health of chickens and can cause more harm than good, not only for the chickens but also the consumer. For more information please refer to the US National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health.