Fish meal, or fishmeal, is a commercial product made from both whole fish and the bones and offal from processed fish. It is a brown powder or cake obtained by rendering pressing the cooked whole fish or fish trimmings to remove most of the fish oil and water, and then ground. What remains is the "fishmeal".

Fish meal differs from fish hydrolysate in that the hydrolysate form has the oil and the protein included in the product.

Aquaculture

The major use of fish meal is as a high-protein supplement in aquaculture feed. The main producing countries in 2004 were Peru, Chile, China, Thailand, USA, Japan and Denmark. Worldwide production is about 6.3 million tons annually. Fish meal goes for about $1200 per ton, but there is a possibility that one day fish meal will have to compete with concentrated barley protein in aquaculture feeds. Agricultural Research Service scientists are currently researching methods to replace both fish meal and soy protein concentrate with barley concentrate in fish food. The expected cost of concentrated barley protein ranges from $700-$1200 per ton, which would make the product competitive in the commercial fish food industry. [1]