The ocean is a finite resource under great strain. Many companies in the omega-3s industry have already implemented sustainability models amid consumer demand for transparent environmental stewardship. Already, a mass of dietary supplement stakeholders consider it vitally important to meet global benchmarks and gold standards of fair trade, carbon reduction, and other measures of impact on people and the planet.

At the GOED Exchange 2022, experts in the field of fish oil and other sources of omega-3s offered predictions about future supply chains that provide both marine and non-marine sources of EPA and DHA to the world.

Tide Shift
Antonio Hautle, director of the Switzerland and Liechtenstein branch of the United Nations Global Compact, said that in many industries, including that of nutrition, quality comes with new connotations about ecology and social impact.

“I’d like to talk about what quality means,” Hautle said. “When thinking about faults in quality that exist in dietary supplements … do we think about products which are ocean-safe, organic, support biodiversity, and have an overall good environmental impact all the way through the supply and distribution chain? And what about social quality? It’s evident that these products are important to the population’s well-being, but there’s also the question for fair prices, fair production, ensuring living wages are met across the supply chain, and eliminating the bonded labor and child labor that persists in the fishing industry across the world.”

Investment is shifting toward companies that have ecological credentials, such as those that come with joining voluntary initiatives such as the UN Global Compact, Hautle said. In certain countries such as Switzerland, he noted, investments in companies with sustainability platforms are doubling in volume every year. BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, is aligning investments in sustainable businesses at a heightening rate.

Chris Gearheart, director of member communications and engagement at GOED, discussed the sustainability paradigm that the trade organization seeks to set in the coming years.

Firstly, GOED will use the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as a vocabulary for omega-3 businesses to discuss their own environmental initiatives. “While different governments have their own sustainability regulations, SDGs will become a normal way of doing business at a global level,” he said.

The organization conducted a survey of more than 160 of its member companies in 2021 to assess membership needs for support of efforts aimed at improving impact on the environment.

“We asked if GOED should work to support sustainability along the entire value chain, and the answer was a resounding yes. Already, there is a critical mass of ESG (environmental, social, and governance) activity among members, and these members want support.”

Altogether, 72% of GOED member companies reported that they are currently either taking action or have a formal sustainability strategy being implemented. For those who are not in this lion’s share, they cited a lack of personnel, high cost, lack of demand from consumers, or that sustainability doesn’t apply to their business as a reason for not having a formal sustainability framework in place.

“Fifty-seven percent of respondents said that GOED should curate or create training tools and resources for members when it comes to sustainability, and a sizeable minority of respondents said that GOED should benchmark the industry with standards, assessments, and other key performance indicators,” Gearheart said. “We received explicit requests for reporting and certification, workshopping, dialogues, and for us to provide information about new international regulations. We could also provide updates on ESG milestones that companies reach across membership and trade media.”

“The stakes are high,” Gearheart continued, stating that the ocean doesn’t have the capacity to provide even the most conservative estimated sufficient daily dose of EPA and DHA to the entire world population. “But good health and well-being can’t be given the short end of the stick either … Most people agree that sustainability is the most urgent issue the omega-3s industry needs to address. I would make the argument that thinking about our environmental impact is an issue that isn’t separate from other key concerns our members listed, such as consumer acceptance of omega-3s, negative media attention, and supply chain issues.”

Unique Sources
On the supply side, leaders of several companies discussed the role that sourcing EPA and DHA from less conventional sources, including genetically-altered plants and microscopic organisms, might have in changing the overall ecological impact of the segment’s supply chain.

Alice Marie Pedersen, PhD, head of science and human health at Zooca, discussed the company’s creation of a value chain of lipids sourced from a tiny red zooplankton called Calanus finmarchicus. The species, sourced above the border of the arctic circle in Norway, is one of the most numerous species on earth, and has not been harvested for commercial purposes.

“This is an enormous biomass with high lipid and protein content … About 300 million tons are in the Norwegian Sea alone every year, which is almost double the weight harvested by all fishery and aquaculture in the world,” Pedersen said. “Our harvesting quota is about 0.0005% of the total population each year.”

The species, which descends thousands of meters below the surface of the sea seasonally, begins to store its energy as a liquid wax, packing lipids in a 1:1 ratio with alcohols, Pedersen said. “This is how it sinks during its winter hibernation without losing energy.”

“Liquid wax esters are extremely hydrophobic, and digestive enzymes need to do a lot more work—and work for a much longer time to metabolize them,” Pedersen continued. “The key feature of this oil is that it travels much further through the intestine, reaching later parts of the small intestine where it contacts specialized free fatty acid receptors. This helps to more strongly regulate glucose and fatty acid metabolism.”

Katrina Benedicto, director of marketing and communications for Nuseed Nutritional, discussed the company’s transgenic canola-based EPA and DHA ingredient, Nutriterra. This particular type of canola has several genes inserted from microalgae, at which point the land-based plant is able to transform its natural oleic acid content into EPA and DHA, all while reducing its omega-6 content in order to give it an overall healthier fatty acid profile.

“While plant-based alternatives won’t be the dominant part of the omega-3s market, it will bring in consumers who prefer plant-based options,” Benedicto said. When it came to concerns of bioavailability, she noted that the ingredient has been clinically-validated to increase plasma concentrations of EPA, DHA, and ALA at doses of 300, 600, and 1,200 mg.

“Further, there are fewer tolerability concerns compared to fish oil, no aftertaste, no belching, and an easy-to-swallow format,” Benedicto said.

The company also conducted a consumer survey in order to assess the reception of plant-based omega-3 sources, and found that among 1,237 supplement users, 84% had previously used omega-3s supplements, and two thirds of this group said that they stopped due to concerns about ocean health, Benedicto said. Forty percent of consumers surveyed also said they’d prefer omega-3 supplements from plant-based sources, a figure which jumped to 64% when consumers were presented with a description of Nutriterra.