This article is from Food for Feed, a series investigating the global fishmeal industry. It is produced by the Outlaw Ocean Project, a news organization based in Washington, D.C., and excerpted by Mongabay. On Jan. 8, 1966, a South African ship caught fire at sea. At port in Bristol, in the U.K., firefighters pried open the smoking container, and the conflagration spread and burned for five days. A little over a month later, on Feb. 11, a Liberian steamship caught fire near Rotterdam. The blaze spread and ignited a storage area with barrels of petrol, raging for several days, before melting the deck and mast, and eventually sinking the vessel. Then, on March 19 that same year, a Danish ship caught fire off Long Beach, California, injuring three firefighters and killing a longshoreman, and causing more than $1 million in estimated damages. These were far from isolated incidents. Fishmeal powder is known for spontaneously combusting as it decays and oxidizes. From the 1950s through the 1970s, fishmeal cargo ignited at least 90 fires on ships and in plants around the world, according to a review of historical news coverage by the Outlaw Ocean Project, a news organization based in Washington, D.C. The culprit in each fire was fishmeal, a dark-yellow powder made by drying and pulverizing fish. More than half of the seafood consumed around the world is from aquafarms. Fishmeal or fish is crucial for farm-raised salmon, shrimp, tilapia, and other species. Fishmeal. Image by Phu Thinh Co via…This article was originally published on Mongabay

This article is from Food for Feed, a series investigating the global fishmeal industry. It is produced by the Outlaw Ocean Project, a news organization based in Washington, D.C., and excerpted by Mongabay. In late August 2025, a company named Marine Impex Pvt. Ltd. contacted the city council of Cuncolim, a city in southern India, to propose constructing a new fishmeal processing plant. Each month, the 1.6-hectare (4-acre) facility would process at least 2,400 metric tons of fishmeal, a protein-rich, dark-yellow powder made by pulverizing and cooking wild-caught fish, which is used as feed for farm-raised seafood like shrimp, salmon, and tuna. The proposal sparked outrage. In media coverage, local environmental advocates and politicians voiced strong objections. “If this project is allowed, it is as if we have killed the people of Cuncolim,” said city councilor Landry Mascarenhas. State lawmaker Elvis Gomes drafted a letter to the governor of Goa state, where Cuncolim is located, asking him to intervene and explained that the stench from existing plants chokes “the lungs with such foul air that the effect of it pervades for a prolonged period.” He added, “It is simply beyond a normal human’s capacity to endure.” The outcry in Cuncolim cast a spotlight on a powerful industry with a history of wrongdoing. Between 2018 and 2024, at least 30 Indian fishmeal plants were involved in a range of environmental violations and other legal infractions, such as dumping waste into waterways and boreholes, evading taxes, using illegal timber to fuel boilers,…This article was originally published on Mongabay

This article is from Food for Feed, a series investigating the global fishmeal industry. It is produced by the Outlaw Ocean Project, a news organization based in Washington, D.C., and excerpted by Mongabay. On Aug. 20, 2022, at least 50 protesters poured into the streets of Cayar, Senegal, demanding the closure of a nearby fishmeal factory, Touba Protéine Marine. Marching from the coastal town’s fishing wharf to the plant, they hoisted signs reading “Cayar is sick” and “Our water is contaminated.” In a video that spread widely on Facebook, demonstrators chanted, “Time to respect our Cayar.” Their grievances were many. Protesters said the Senegalese government had broken its pledge not to authorize any new fishmeal plants — factories that produce a lucrative dark-yellow powder by cooking and pulverizing fish. Touba Protéine Marine, they said, had been built less than a third of a mile from homes, triggering health problems and violating local zoning laws, according to government documents and satellite imagery. The stench, residents said, made daily life unbearable. “Harsh reality of the Global South,” wrote Serigne Mbaye, one of the demonstrators, in a Facebook post sharing the protest video. The plant, owned until 2022 by the Spanish company Barna, was said to process whole fish. Elsewhere in the world, fishmeal is typically produced from bycatch and undesired parts of fish. The use of whole fish is legal, according to Fatou Diouf, a director in Senegal’s Ministry of Fisheries, in a written response to questions. “There is no law prohibiting…This article was originally published on Mongabay

UMPHANG, Thailand — At 8 a.m. on June 26, at least 13 double-trailer trucks were lined up at the Pheung Khleung border crossing in northern Thailand — one of the few places where minerals can be legally transported overland from Myanmar into Thailand. Tensions were running high under the sun. The border gate had not yet opened and irate mineral merchants were yelling at reporters, demanding that no photos be taken. The previous day, the Thai military personnel that oversee the cross-border mineral trade had granted Mongabay permission to document the hundreds of tons of antimony expected to be delivered from Myanmar’s Karen state to Thailand’s Tak province, some 200 kilometers (124 miles) south of the city of Mae Sot. Reporters were forbidden from photographing soldiers’ involvement in the trade or the minerals themselves. It wasn’t until 10 a.m. that the border gates opened and the first truck from Karen state bearing antimony, a silvery mineral used in bullets, bombs, armor, semi-conductors and other defense, aerospace and tech industries, crossed into Thai territory. Bars of processed antimony were hoisted from Myanmar trucks into Thai trucks at the Pheung Khleung border crossing in June 2026. Image by Gerald Flynn / Mongabay. A crane, followed by a parade of battered trucks, rolled over from Myanmar and instantly workers from both sides frantically began attaching hoisting cables to 1-ton bags of what reporters were told was antimony ore and stacked bars of antimony ingot. Drivers sheltered from the heat as bags and bars…This article was originally published on Mongabay