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Seafood Castoffs Become an Upcycled Cat Food Business

Jan. 30, 2024

North Coast Seafoods launches Boat to Bowl Pet Foods, offering responsibly caught, upcycled fish in a handful of products available at Target.

Dave Fusaro

Way up the supply chain, getting fish ready for consumers is a messy affair, with heads, tails, skin and scales creating quite a bit of waste – not to mention the meat overlooked by fast-paced trimming. A Boston-based seafood supplier is making the most of those discards by creating a cat food business, and its products just became available in Target stores nationwide.

North Coast Seafoods since 1957 has been supplying quality seafood to fine restaurants, retailers and institutions across the country. Now it’s started Boat to Bowl Pet Foods, offering responsibly caught, premium, upcycled, wild fish in every recipe.

“This approach utilizes 100% of our ocean harvest while minimizing food waste,” says the company, which is dedicated to using only Marine Stewardship Council (MSC)-certified fish. “Now pet-parents can feed their companions the same delicious, wholesome seafood found on plates across the country.”

"Our mission has always been to provide sustainable, natural, healthy seafood options, " said Jon Wooner, pet products director at North Coast Seafoods. “Like us, cats depend on a diet rich in wholesome nutrition to live a full, healthy life.”

In order to be considered MSC Certified Sustainable, the fish must be caught:

From sustainable fish stocks with enough fish left in the sea to reproduce indefinitely.
With minimal environmental impact.
By a fishery with effective management in place.

Fish is also one of the most carbon-efficient proteins on the planet, the company adds.

The Boat to Bowl assortment available at Target will include 3 Fish-First Dry Kibble Recipes, along with 2 Food Toppers and a Fish Oil Omega-3 Topper to add an extra boost of flavor and nutrition to every meal.

About the Author

Dave Fusaro | Editor in Chief

Dave Fusaro has served as editor in chief of Food Processing magazine since 2003. Dave has 30 years experience in food & beverage industry journalism and has won several national ASBPE writing awards for his Food Processing stories. Dave has been interviewed on CNN, quoted in national newspapers and he authored a 200-page market research report on the milk industry. Formerly an award-winning newspaper reporter who specialized in business writing, he holds a BA in journalism from Marquette University. Prior to joining Food Processing, Dave was Editor-In-Chief of Dairy Foods and was Managing Editor of Prepared Foods.