Alternative Proteins Magazine ISSUE FOCUS 32 October 2025 Feed supply chains in both livestock and aquaculture rely heavily on a small number of conventional ingredients, including soy and fishmeal. Whilst ingredients such as soy and fishmeal have delivered efficient and highly nutritious sources of protein for decades, reliance on a narrow set of inputs exposes feed supply chains to environmental and market risks. For example, climate change is altering weather patterns, with droughts and shifts in ocean conditions reducing crop yields and fish stocks. Meanwhile, cyclical events, such as El Niño, are intensifying these challenges by simultaneously disrupting both agriculture and fisheries. Overfishing is leading to resource depletion, and large-scale soy production has been linked to biodiversity loss. Furthermore, trade disputes, tariffs, and transportation bottlenecks are contributing to volatility in global markets. In response, the feed sector is increasingly exploring the adoption of novel ingredients to diversify inputs and enhance the circularity of feed production. These novel ingredients, many of which can be produced using industrial by-products, including agricultural waste, processing effluents or landfill biogas, offer a promising solution to reduce dependency on environmentally intensive or volatile inputs, while helping producers improve their climate and biodiversity performance. WHAT ARE CIRCULAR FEED INGREDIENTS? The utilisation of waste is already a well-established practice within feed production. Brewers’ spent grains, a major by-product of beer production, are commonly repurposed as a nutrient-rich ingredient in livestock feed. In addition, swill feeding is a practised approach in East Asia, where regulated frameworks support the large-scale conversion of post-consumer food waste into pig feed. Novel feed technologies are emerging ingredients that offer the potential to further expand the range of sidestreams valorised for animal feed, using more heavily underutilised waste streams, including industrial by-products, emissions, and processing res- “Circular feed ingredients represent one of the most practical tools for improving the sustainability of animal feed. By valorising industrial by-products into nutritious inputs for livestock and aquaculture, they can help diversify supply chains and reduce overreliance on conventional ingredients such as soy and fishmeal. Substantive progress will depend on supportive regulation, investment in infrastructure, and stronger collaboration between feed producers, innovators, and policymakers.” CLOSING THE LOOP: THE CIRCULAR POTENTIAL OF NOVEL INGREDIENTS Aashish Khimasia Director of Research Centre for Feed Innovation
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