{"version":1,"type":"rich","provider_name":"Libsyn","provider_url":"https:\/\/www.libsyn.com","height":90,"width":600,"title":"What Your Farmed Salmon Ate: Inside a Five-Year Fishmeal Investigation","description":"More than half the seafood eaten on Earth now comes from fish farms, and most of those farmed fish are raised on fishmeal made from wild-caught fish. Maya Martin, deputy editor at The Outlaw Ocean Project, joins Andrew Lewin to unpack Food for Feed, a five-year investigation that traced fishmeal from the ships that catch it, through the plants that grind it, to the farmed fish on your plate. Maya explains how forage fish like sardinella and anchoveta are pulled from waters off West Africa, Peru and Southeast Asia, often from stocks that are already overexploited and from communities that depend on them for food and work. She walks through the stench and toxic waste that surround fishmeal plants, the protests they spark, the deaths and injuries of workers, the fire-retardant chemical ethoxyquin, and fish farms built in China's Xinjiang desert whose salmon has reached US institutions. She also shows how the team's Bait to Plate tool lets anyone follow a supply chain end to end, and why third-party certifications have missed many of these problems. You'll leave knowing which seafood choices avoid the fishmeal problem, from filter-feeding shellfish to local catch you can see come in, and which organizations are pushing retailers and governments to clean up the supply chain. Content note: this episode discusses forced labour, violence, deaths at sea and migrant deaths. Explore the investigation at foodforfeed.theoutlawocean.com and baittoplate.theoutlawocean.com. Links mentioned in this episode Food for Feed investigation: https:\/\/foodforfeed.theoutlawocean.com Bait to Plate supply chain tool: https:\/\/baittoplate.theoutlawocean.com Food for Feed findings: https:\/\/foodforfeed.theoutlawocean.com\/findings Methodology, including country-by-country partner groups: https:\/\/foodforfeed.theoutlawocean.com\/methodology Company and certifier responses (Discussion page): https:\/\/discussion.theoutlawocean.com\/food-for-feed The Outlaw Ocean Project: https:\/\/theoutlawocean.com Amnesty International: https:\/\/www.amnesty.org Greenpeace: https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org Oceana: https:\/\/oceana.org Sea Shepherd: https:\/\/seashepherd.org The Outlaw Ocean Project's New York Times follow-up on eating seafood sustainably: https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/10\/09\/briefing\/fish-food.html Previous HTPTO episode with Dr. Marine Cusa (Oceana) on fishmeal:  Fish Feed in Aquaculture: https:\/\/www.speakupforblue.com\/show\/speak-up-for-the-ocean-blue\/podcast-28\/ The Squid You Eat is a Mystery: https:\/\/www.speakupforblue.com\/show\/speak-up-for-the-ocean-blue\/podcast-82\/ Takeaways More than half of the world's seafood comes from aquaculture, and more than two-thirds of farmed seafood depends on fishmeal and fish oil from wild fish At least half of the species landed by fishmeal vessels assessed in the investigation are overexploited or worse Roughly 90% of the catch used for fishmeal is edible for people, and in West Africa sardinella is a staple protein and a livelihood More than 9.5 million people live within a mile of a fishmeal plant, and the investigation documented at least 80 incidents of civil unrest tied to the industry Over half of more than 550 seafood companies making strong sustainability claims had documented crimes or concerns in their supply chains Farmed shellfish like mussels, oysters and clams need no feed, which makes them a lower-impact choice Your action: look up one farmed seafood product you buy on Bait to Plate and see where its feed came from   ","author_name":"How To Protect The Ocean","author_url":"https:\/\/www.speakupforblue.com\/show\/speak-up-for-the-ocean-blue\/","html":"