Dr Louise Buttle is an aquaculture professional with over 25 years’ experience in the industry. After completing a PhD at the University of Hull on the physiology of nitrogen excretion in the African catfish, Louise joined EWOS Cargill. Today, Louise is working in the Global Aqua team for dsm-firmenich with technical marketing and has commercial Global Key Account Responsibility in ANH Essential products. Louise has a strong passion for sustainable development of aquaculture and is leading the business roll-out of Sustell™ in the aquaculture industry.
You have a rich career in the industry, how did you get into this field?
I started with my PhD in the African Catfish which at that time was considered the fish that was going to ‘solve the food problems of the world.’ It’s an incredibly hardy fish but it’s quite interesting from a physiological point of view because it has air breathing organs, meaning it can withstand a lot of different water quality conditions.
I was really excited about aquaculture and I was lucky enough to get my first job with EWOS in their technology centre, where I had an amazing experience growing professionally for over 20 years, all over the world. I started off in Scotland and as R&D Manager in Chile, then in Bergen. I’ve been with the dsm-firmenich for five years now.
Where are you currently based now?
I work in a global team, working closely with colleagues in head office in Switzerland. It’s always great to connect with colleagues in the operating companies. Last week I was in Japan working with the aqua team and in November I was in Chile. That’s where my energy is – working in the operating countries close to the customers.
Could you elaborate on the extension of Sustell platform to include sea bass and sea bream and contributes to ensuring an accurate footprint for marine fish producers?
Salmon has had a reputation for being a sustainability frontliner but we saw an opportunity to really extend the module in Sustell to marine fish, specifically sea beach, sea bream, sea bass, and trout.
It’s quite new, just launched at the end of last year, so we’re really excited to be talking with customers in that space now. Everyone’s on a sustainability journey, but it’s important to know your data when it comes to foot printing and environmental impact.
In recent years there’s been a growing interest in alternative protein sources for acrid feed such as insect meal or single-cell proteins. What are your perspectives on the potential of these alternative ingredients in closing the protein gap in the acrid feed formulations?
One of the levers of sustainable agriculture is sustainable raw materials. In the salmon industry, especially in Norway, there’s a very small raw material basket and that makes us exposed to geopolitical affairs, also on our menu.
We recognise that there’s limited resources of our standard raw materials, but if our industry is going to grow sustainably, we’re going to need those novel alternative ingredients.
When it comes to proteins, there’s some great candidates. Insect meals have had a great deal of funding. dsm-firmenech have a really exciting project called ‘Smart Protein’ which comes out of the expert centre Bioscience in Delft, Netherlands and we’ve reached a 70 percent protein target through natural strain selection.
With our latest LCA investigations, we think that we’re going to reach a carbon footprint of less than one (potentially 0.5). In terms of alternative raw materials, they need to be sustainable and there’s many metrics you can define this with, from carbon footprint to things like biodiversity, land use, water use. I think we’re going to see more scrutiny on those metrics going forward, especially considering the many companies who have signed up to science-based targets within 2030. It’s a massive ambition, but how is it going to happen in reality?
In the recent years, we’ve seen more people advocate for sustainability and responsible sourcing of raw materials.How do you think the industry is going to respond into this?
When it comes to transparency around raw material use, I think the salmon industry and the feed industry specifically, has done a very good job in terms of being open on raw material use, within the constraints of commercial perspective.
I think the industry is really good at discussing amongst themselves, but not so good at really communicating to the outside world. There is this gap between our internal knowledge, tracking, and monitoring of raw materials and how that’s perceived on the outside world, and what sustainability means to our stakeholders. We’ve set a good track record but I think it still needs to be pushed further.
Raw materials sourcing is a significant aspect of aquafeed formulation. Could you shed some lights on how dsm-firmenich approaches a selection of raw materials to ensure both nutritional quality and sustainability in aquafeed production?
Dsm-firmenich have ambitions, with our products, supplies, micro ingredients, performance solutions, vitamins, and carotenoids, to the feed companies for aquaculture, and other animal protein industries such as swine, poultry, ruminants. We’re the first company of this kind to sign up to science-based targets, and I think our science-based targets are sitting at around 39 percent.
We also have a carbon footprint calculator for our premixes, and we’re always looking at supplier assurance and quality, our ambition is to have environmental product declarations.
It’s also important to say that in terms of our energy use, we have ambitions around renewable energy. So as a corporate and animal nutrition and health business, we’re really pushing the boundaries in terms of what we’re prepared to do in sustainability.
Looking ahead, what do you foresee as the most significant opportunities and challenges for the aquaculture industry, particularly concerning feed innovation and sustainability?
With sustainable aquaculture, food loss and waste is an important challenge, and of course an key part of that is fish health and welfare and mortality.
If one in 10 of your fish are not getting over a kilo, then that is a sustainability issue. Ingredients that can really drive performance, as well as fish health and welfare.
Lastly, there’s exciting developments in sustainable raw materials. I’m especially excited about single-cell proteins because it can deliver growth without increasing the footprint or the environmental impact of agriculture.
