CSIRO Food Waste Prawn Trial

Main findings

• This study assessed five food waste (FW) streams including: 1) fish offal + grain, 2) pub + restaurant, 3) bakery, 4) meat + bone meal and 5) vegetable + fruit.
• Replacement of traditional ingredients with FW ingredients reduced growth due to decreased feed intake which indicates a likely palatability issue
• FW from vegetable + fruit waste stream was shown to impede digestion of protein in prawns. Vegetable + fruit waste is known to contain various antinutritional factors which likely resulted in the growth and feed intake reductions observed in prawns fed FW based diets
• Fish offal + grain and the bakery FW streams produced superior nutrient digestibility compared to the other FW streams. Pub + restaurant and meat + bone meal were a good quality source of lipid but an inferior source of protein
• The sustainability of FW based diets for prawns can be improved by increasing the protein concentration of FW streams (consequently extracting more lipid from the FW streams)

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