Cargill and its EWOS brand celebrated the opening of the USD 10.5 million (EUR 9.57 million) Cargill Innovation Center, which has become the world’s largest research center of its kind, on 18 October in Colaco, Chile.
Focused primarily on improving the health and well-being of salmon, the center will serve as a hub where EWOS and Cargill experts can research, test and develop fish diets as well as study diseases known to affect farmed salmon in Chile and beyond.
The innovation center, which was built in part with funding from Chilean development agency Corfo, already has more than 30 scientists and aquaculture experts on staff. First up on the research agenda for the Cargill Innovation Center is the study of two major health challenges in the farmed salmon industry: Salmonid Rickettsial Septicaemia (SRS), which is spurred by a bacteria responsible for 79 percent of the mortality in salmon and exists as the main reason for antibiotics use in Chile; and caligidosis, which is caused by caligus or "sea lice," a parasite that attaches to salmon skin, affecting the animal's health, according to Cargill.
Chile will be able to facilitate four to five times more studies than it did before thanks to the new research crew, increasing the global capacity for fish health research by 30 percent, according to the company.
"Having our own fish health center will accelerate our product development programs, allowing us to quickly develop new customer solutions," said Einar Wathne, president of Cargill Aqua Nutrition, in a prepared statement. "We will be able to dig much deeper into the primary diseases and combat the risks they create for salmon producers, and also apply our learnings across multiple species of fish."
"Proper fish nutrition is an excellent tool to help control disease," Simon Wadsworth, global fish health manager for Cargill Aqua Nutrition, said. "A fish consumes some 30,000 pellets in its lifetime and that means there are the same number of opportunities to manage the specimens – with no manipulation – to help the sustainability of the industry."
