The omega-3 industry may be facing renewed pressure around fish oil supply, but Andrew Hebard, founder and CEO of Natures Crops, sees a bigger challenge. <\/p>\n
Speaking with NutraIngredients following the Regenerate Symposium in Halifax, Hebard discussed why simply \u201creshuffling the supply deck\u201d will not close the nutrition gap, where plant-based omega-3s fit alongside marine sources and why he believes the industry needs to broaden both the sources and applications it considers part of the omega-3 market.<\/p>\n
NutraIngredients: What prompted Natures Crops to organize the Regenerate Symposium, and what conversations within the omega-3 industry did you feel weren\u2019t happening or weren\u2019t happening enough?<\/p>\n
Andrew Hebard: It\u2019s really about trying to enlarge our community and bringing so many different disciplines and skill sets and expertise to the table to share ideas and to tackle a challenge that I don\u2019t think is really being addressed at the moment around omega-3 nutrition.<\/p>\n
At the moment, omega-3 and fish oil are in the news because there\u2019s a supply crisis and that\u2019s causing price concerns and supply concerns.<\/p>\n
But all we\u2019re doing is reshuffling the supply deck.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m a farmer and I\u2019m forever thinking about resiliency and quality of food and that sort of thing.<\/p>\n
A successful outcome for us is that people share this with other people. If it just stays within the 140 people who were here today, that wasn\u2019t a success.<\/p>\n
NI: Why, in your opinion, has the industry struggled to close that gap despite the 50 years of research? Consumer awareness and product development also play a role. Why do you think the industry is struggling to close that gap?<\/p>\n
Hebard: I think the omega-3 industry is founded on fish oil. It\u2019s a fact.<\/p>\n
The whole supply chain- the harvesting, the processing, the distribution, the science is based on fish oil.<\/p>\n
Food companies don\u2019t dispute that omega-3s are essential and they\u2019re good for you. They say, I\u2019m not messing with that. That\u2019s a risk to my brand because it\u2019s very difficult to formulate fish or algal oil into a plant-based milk or even a cow-based milk, or anything that has any concern over taste, sensory, and shelf life.<\/p>\n
Brands are built on people buying their product again because they say it tastes good.<\/p>\n
You\u2019ve got the fact that the supply industry has been built around fish. The other one is that the food manufacturing industry has been built around non-fish.<\/p>\n
NI: Where do you see plant-derived oils fitting into the broader omega-3 market rather than simply competing with fish oil?<\/p>\n
Hebard: I think if there\u2019s a recognition, which there is, but a growing recognition that plant-based omega-3s are actually complementary to fish oil, and we look at a broad spectrum omega nutrition, then I think they play an ideal role in taking the pressure off fish resources.<\/p>\n
I think part of it will come through complementarity and framing it as part of the whole.<\/p>\n
I think it\u2019s inevitable, but it\u2019s unfortunate that plant-based is being elevated not for its strengths, but because of fish oil\u2019s weaknesses.<\/p>\n
That will help the plant-based movement, but it shouldn\u2019t be the reason. It should be another contributing factor.<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s not treat omega-3s as a cure. Let\u2019s treat them as a basic element of our fundamental nutrition.<\/p>\n
We should get them from different sources.<\/p>\n
NI: What are supplement brands and formulators asking for from omega-3 ingredient suppliers today that they weren\u2019t asking for five or ten years ago?<\/p>\n
Hebard: Traceability and sustainability have always been front of mind, but they have been greenwashed a little bit, so it\u2019s been more about box-checking.<\/p>\n
Now they\u2019re auditing your supply chain.<\/p>\n
Show me, show me the evidence, and this idea of resiliency is really coming to the fore: how resilient is it, how vulnerable are we to climate change or to even things that are beyond- climate\u2019s obviously beyond our control, but things that are man-made, like subsidies or tariffs or are you vulnerable to that?<\/p>\n
The cost of running out, though, is like I\u2019ve got to reformulate, I\u2019ve got to relabel, I\u2019ve got to repackage, I\u2019ve got to do new stability trials.<\/p>\n
So I think brands are wanting to say, let\u2019s really think about the resiliency of our supply chain.<\/p>\n
The days of having 20 different suppliers we could call upon and just trade one off against the other for the cheapest ingredient are gone.<\/p>\n
I think there is real agency and value in having relationships with farmers.<\/p>\n
NI: Where do you see the biggest untapped opportunity for omega-3 innovation? Is that in the science and the formulation, the delivery formats, consumer positioning or in another area?<\/p>\n
Hebard: I think it\u2019s probably all of the above, but I think food and beverage is untapped.<\/p>\n
I think the advent and ubiquity of GLP-1 nutrition is making people think about nutrient density.<\/p>\n
I think food and beverage, and if you\u2019re familiar with the plant-based milk category, is huge.<\/p>\n
But that requires innovation around delivery systems.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m a big fan of food and beverage.<\/p>\n
NI: If the omega-3 industry is still talking about a significant nutrition gap five years from now, what will the industry have gotten wrong?<\/p>\n
Hebard: I think it will have focused too heavily on preserving today\u2019s market rather than growing for tomorrow\u2019s market.<\/p>\n
The dominant players have great market share, and they want to maintain it, so they\u2019re having to think about reshuffling the EPA and DHA source deck.<\/p>\n
And there\u2019s every reason why they should continue doing that.<\/p>\n
But I think the tent has to get bigger, and it has to bring in new players.<\/p>\n
And particularly in food and bev companies that say actually there\u2019s an opportunity here.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s gonna need more events like this; it\u2019s going to need a bigger tent.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t think people can unhear what they\u2019ve heard or unsee what they\u2019ve seen, which I think is a good thing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The omega-3 industry may be facing renewed pressure around fish oil supply, but Andrew Hebard, founder and CEO…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":623384,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[134,111,139,556,69],"class_list":["post-623383","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nutrition","tag-health","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nutrition","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/623383","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=623383"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/623383\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/623384"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=623383"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=623383"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=623383"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}