Challenge FAQ

The Future of Fish Feed (F3) is a collaborative effort between NGOs, researchers, and private partnerships to accelerate the commercialization of innovative, substitute aquaculture feed ingredients to replace wild-caught fish. The F3 Team works together to organize and administer the contest.

F3 defines “plant-based” as consisting mostly of plant materials, with a small amount of non-marine animal protein included. The plant-based diet used as the base feed to which all F3 Krill Replacements will be added does contain a small amount (6%) of poultry blood meal as an amino acid source, however the rest of the protein in the base diet is provided by plant sources.

We know that any number of high quality products can now be derived from seafood processing waste and byproducts. However, the purpose of this contest is to bring to the market new products that do not depend on the harvest of any marine animals. Additionally, our qualification process is capable of verifying presence/absence of marine animal ingredients but not the source of any marine animal ingredients (i.e., farmed or wild-caught, byproducts). Thus, we are unable to allow any fishery or aquaculture byproducts to compete in the F3 Challenge at this time.

Yes, the Challenge is open to companies worldwide. However, the Challenge is not open to any company residing in Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Russia, Syria, the Crimea, Donetsk People’s Republic, and Luhansk People’s Republic regions of the Ukraine, or any other jurisdiction where the Challenge would be restricted or prohibited by law. Void where prohibited and restricted by law.

English is the official language for submissions and all other communications for the Challenge. International competitors need to translate any communications into English for their submissions to be considered.

Yes, we encourage consortia.

More information coming soon. 

More important than the grand prizes (USD) (amount to be determined at a later date), all participants receive significant publicity through news stories about the challenge in seafood and feed media outlets as well as other popular news outlets. In 2022, 807 news articles mentioned the F3 Challenge and its contestants, which was a potential audience reach of 3.1 billion people.

The F3 Team and judges have an incentive to keep the reputation of the F3 Challenge. Entrants must disclose ingredients, but not the recipe (formulation). Usually, ingredients need to be disclosed in most countries on the product tag, so the contest request is not unusual. Business information from the prior four F3 competitions were never disclosed or leaked.

More information to come soon.

We will use isotopic and qPCR analysis to verify that products are free of any marine animal ingredients.

There is a lot of good information on fishing bycatch and the processed waste of seafood being used as ingredients back into aquaculture diets, normally for unrelated species. While we agree that these are efficient uses of these resources, there are also many problems. Bycatch and seafood processing byproducts are often and increasingly used for direct human consumption. In addition, removing forage fish and bycatch from the ocean impacts animals higher in the marine food chain, such as seabirds, marine mammals, and larger fish. Many studies have documented the decline in large predatory species. It is also important to point out that processing waste produces low-quality fish meal and fish oil, as high-quality protein and oils have been removed. The high bone and scale content meal that is left is an inferior ingredient, but nevertheless does contribute 10-15% of the global fish meal supply and extends the supply of fish meal as overfishing continues in some parts of the world.

Aquafeed companies are keenly interested in substitute ingredients to replace fishmeal and fish oil, because of their high cost. But, ingredient replacement is risky. To prove to aquafeed companies that your ingredient has promise, we recommend you follow the recommended Ingredient Evaluation Process outlined here.

F3 is not responsible for the sample shipping. Shipping is the responsibility of the competitor and we defer to your team on the best method. Our recommendation is that you collaborate with an importer who can facilitate and ensure compliance with all applicable regulations. 

More information to come regarding samples.