Challenge FAQ

This third F3 challenge is to create a fish-free feed for ​3 separate Award Categories: Shrimp, Salmonids and Other Carnivorous species. The goal of this challenge is to reduce aquaculture’s demand for forage fish by advancing substitute feeds for the industry’s biggest consumers of forage fish.

Each separate Award Category will have its own prize, its own contestants and will have a single winner. A company can enter multiple Award Categories, and needs to submit a feed sample for each category entered. When sending the feed sample, be sure to include the Award Category, the Species or Animal for which the feed applies, and the Life Stage.

The Future of Fish Feed (F3) is a collaborative effort between NGOs, researchers, and private partnerships to accelerate the commercialization of innovative, substitute aquaculture feed ingredients to replace wild-caught fish. The F3 Team works together to organize and administer the contest.

Entrants need to be companies that can produce and sell feed. Companies can collaborate with other entrants to form a team, but each team must have a company that leads the group or the ‘Lead Entrant’.​ The lead entrant must​ either own or license a distinct formulation of F3 feed (“F3 Feed Type”) for a carnivorous fish in one of three categories: (a) Salmonid, (b) Shrimp, or (c) Other Carnivorous Species. If a Lead Entrant submits a feed for Other Carnivorous Species, the Entrant needs to have the​ species approved by the Judges. Qualified submissions are defined in the Challenge Rules.

The Lead Entrant can form partnerships with other companies to create an Entrant Team. The lead entrant should send the following information to f3fishfreefeed@gmail.com​for each partnering company: (1) the name of company and website (2) the name, title, address, work phone number, mobile phone number, and email address of the contact person at the company, and include (3) a brief description of the partnership, and if the lead entrant is partnering with other companies for purposes of aggregating total sales of qualifying F3 Feed Types to End Customers, then for each such partner, in addition to (1)-(3) above, please also include: (4) a description of the partner company’s sales territory.

Partnering companies can be added to Entrant Teams until November 30. 2021.

The Lead Entrant of the winning team for each category will be awarded the prize, and be responsible for splitting the prize at its discretion among its Entrant Team partners as described in the Challenge Rules.

Yes! Such a company would qualify for the Challenge so long as their species is approved by the Judges. They must also be able to quantify the qualifying feed they are producing, and provide some means to verify the amount of animals grown on this feed.

A fish-free ingredient by itself would not qualify in the metric of the contest, which is the number of tons of qualifying feed sold for salmon, shrimp, or other carnivorous species. However, we encourage ingredient suppliers to partner with feed companies, farms, and others to formulate and sell complete fish-free feeds for the competition. Companies may compete on more than one team, with one or more diets in each Award Category.

The Entrant Team is responsible for distributing any prize money amongst its members.

Yes, we encourage consortia.

有充分的理由加入这项挑战赛。首先，由于挑战赛技术难度较大，即使是试点规模的努力也极有可能获胜。其他好处还包括媒体宣传和受邀参加F3大会。

• Adaptability: Companies that switch to substitute ingredients will be better positioned for long-term growth, because they will be able to continue to supply and sell feed for a wide variety of carnivorous aquacultured fish, even if wild-caught forage fish stocks diminish, or become unavailable. These companies will have ‘future-proofed’ their supply chain through leveraging the opportunity of the F3 Challenge contest.
• 媒体宣传：若您的产品还未发布，挑战赛的广泛媒体宣传将有助于您在商业发布之前收到预订；若您的产品已在商业销售中，挑战赛的广泛媒体宣传将有助于您增加订单。挑战赛的宣传覆盖了英语国家、中国和东南亚市场。
• Networking event: Contestants will be invited to participate in the F3 Webinar Series, a virtual networking event with large feed companies and others interested in innovative ingredients for aquaculture.

The F3 prize will be awarded to the company or team that makes and sells the most fish-free feed to aquaculture operations or feed manufacturers by the contest end date.

For sales to qualify and count toward an entrants’ progress in this Challenge, the feed sold must:

1. be formulated as aquaculture feed, for either a Salmonid, Shrimp, or Other Carnivorous Species. If a contestant submits feed for “Other Carnivorous Species,” the contestant must get approval from the judges for the species.
2. be free of marine animal ingredients

The F3 Team and the judges have an incentive to keep the reputation of the F3 Prize. Entrants must disclose ingredients for each feed, but not the recipe (formulation). Usually, ingredients need to be disclosed in most countries on the feed bag, so the contest request is not unusual. Business information from the prior two F3 competitions were never disclosed or leaked.

A company must register for the Challenge by September 15, 2021. Then you have until November 30, 2021 to send in a sample of your qualifying product and add any partners to your contestant team. Effective October 1, 2020, registered teams may begin recording sales towards their Sales Totals for the competition as long as they submit a qualifying feed sample prior to recording sales. Sales reporting will begin in January 2022 and include 4 sales reports, and conclude in September 2022 when a winner will be announced.

A winner will be selected for each category – salmonid, shrimp, and other carnivorous species – by the 3 judges from sponsoring institutions. The winning teams will have the greatest amount of qualifying F3 Feeds sold in their category at the conclusion of the Challenge sales periods (September 15, 2022).

F3将使用DNA测试和色谱法确保参赛饲料来自非海洋动物来源。另外，评委将通过实访和其他验证技术对销售记录进行验证。

是的，挑战赛面向全球。但是，英语是挑战赛提交样品和所有其他通信的官方语言。国际参赛公司需要在提交样品和通信联络的时候使用英文。

No. In fact, we are considering another prize targeted towards recycling farmed fish waste. However, for this prize we want to increase the options available for substitute feed sources for carnivorous species since the supply of wild caught fish and in particular forage fish, which are the most common source of fishmeal and fish oil used in aquafeeds, is at risk. More innovation is needed to find additional ingredients and cost effective formulations if the industry is to continue to grow.

我们也认为水产养殖加工下脚料是鱼粉和鱼油的负责任来源之一，但目前的测试技术尚不能将水产养殖加工下脚料与野生捕捞渔业产品区分开来。

有很多关于兼捕和水产加工副产品的好信息，它们通常被用作生产其他鱼类的饲料原料。让这些资源得到有效利用是件非常好的事情，但也存在许多问题。兼捕和水产加工副产品已经越来越多被用于人类直接消费。此外，从海洋中移除饵料鱼类和兼捕会影响海洋食物链中营养级别较高的动物，如海鸟、哺乳动物和大型鱼类。许多研究也证实了因此造成的大型掠食性动物的减少。另外值得注意的是，由于优质蛋白质和油类已经被移除，加工下脚料目前得到的鱼粉和鱼油质量仍然较低。剩余的部分以骨质、鳞片等劣质成分为主，这样得到的鱼粉质量非常差，但仍占全球鱼粉供应的10-15％，并随着世界某些地区过度捕捞的继续，某种程度上补充了鱼粉的供应。

Aquafeed companies are keenly interested in substitute ingredients to replace fishmeal and fish oil, because of their high cost. But, ingredient replacement is risky. To prove to aquafeed companies that your ingredient has promise, we recommend you follow the recommended Ingredient Evaluation Process outlined here.