Salmon fed on chicken byproducts could soon be sold in British supermarkets, as producers scramble to find cheaper feed.
Some of Europe's biggest fish farms are replacing traditional fish–meal with 'poultry–derived' feed.
These pellets contain the parts of birds unfit for human consumption, bones, livers and brains, although inedible parts like feathers are usually excluded.
Leroy Seafood Group, one of the biggest salmon producers in Norway and a supplier to Tesco, has introduced feed made from poultry bones and organs at all its offshore farms.
Mowi, the world's largest salmon producer and a supplier to both Sainsbury's and Asda, also says it plans to introduce poultry feed at its farms in Scotland and Norway.
Likewise, SalMar, the world's second–largest producer of salmon, announced that it had started testing chicken–based feed at some farms in March.
However, not everyone is on board, with sceptics branding the poultry–fed fish 'unnatural and disgusting'.
Traditional fishmeal–based feed has doubled in price over the past two years, while feed based on chicken is half the price per tonne. Pictured: A worker at Mowi shows granules used to feed the salmon
Until 2013, feeding salmon on poultry–based products was illegal under legislation introduced to halt the spread of diseases such as bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), also known as Mad Cow Disease.
However, restrictions were relaxed as new evidence revealed that using poultry–based feed carries no risk since chicken doesn't carry any bovine prions, the misfolded proteins that spread BSE.
Professor Margareth Øverland, an aquaculture nutrition expert from the Norwegian University of Life Sciences, told the Daily Mail: 'It is safe to feed salmon on chicken by–products.
'These products are high–quality proteins similar to high–quality fish meal, they do not contain any antinutritional factors and they are available in large quantities. They are also valuable lipid sources.'
The safety and efficacy of poultry feed is well established and salmon farmers in Chile and Canada have been using these methods for years.
However, the spur for Europe's biggest fishing groups to turn to chicken has been the spiralling cost of traditional fishmeal.
Fishmeal, a nutrient–rich powder made from fish by–catch and by–products, has almost doubled in price over the last two years, while poultry products are about half the price per tonne.
Professor Øverland says: 'Due to increasing conflicts around the world, large climate changes and a super El Niño, traditional feed resources like fish meal and fish oil are now limited. Thus, the aquaculture industry is looking for alternatives.'
Some of the world's largest salmon farmers are starting to feed their fish chicken byproducts in a scramble to save on costs. Pictured: Salmon farms operated by Mowi, which says it will introduce poultry feed
While salmon fed on chicken products is safe to eat, the bigger concern is about transparency.
Unlike the ingredients used to make a product, manufacturers don't have any requirement to list what goes into the feed their animals eat.
This means consumers might not know whether they are eating a salmon raised on fish or on chicken.
However, market research suggests that people aren't likely to be happy about discovering what their fish has been eating.
A 2026 study by the food institute Nofima found that consumers in the UK and France were largely unaware of what actually goes into salmon feed.
However, Nofima researcher Florent Govaerts said that 'chicken is met with strong scepticism and is associated with something unnatural and disgusting'.
As the major European suppliers start to adopt poultry–based feeds, it's likely that some chicken–fed salmon will start to appear in UK shops, but the major supermarkets have a mixture of policies.
A spokesperson for Marks & Spencer told the Daily Mail: 'We can confirm we do not use chicken or any land animal protein (LAP) in our salmon feed. We also do not sell any other salmon brands in the UK.'
Waitrose and Sainsbury's both confirmed that their own–label salmon products are not permitted to contain poultry–fed fish.
Advocates for chicken–based feed argue that it is more sustainable than producing fishmeal, which requires catching vast amounts of edible fish and processing it into powder. Pictured: A 'super trawler' catching fish for the fishmeal industry
However, neither confirmed whether third–party brands used chicken–fed fish or whether the stores had a specific policy on what feeds these brands could use.
Tesco and Asda were contacted for comment but did not respond before the time of publication.
On the other hand, advocates for poultry–based feeds argue that using up unwanted chicken products is far more sustainable than fishmeal.
Fishmeal requires catching vast quantities of edible fish to feed a smaller amount of a different fish.
Overfishing has already severely depleted the fish stocks used to make fishmeal, and many critics now question whether the feed will be sustainable in the future.
Jørgen Skeide, feed manager at Lerøy, told the Financial Times: 'With the scale of our operation, we needed an alternative to fishmeal... poultry meal was the only raw material that checked all of these boxes.'
Professor Øverland, meanwhile, believes that consumers will 'accept these products'.
She adds: 'They care about circular economy principles and because these products are safe and free of high–risk materials.'