Know more about your fish oil

Fish oil is a  oil produced from  tissues of oily fish found in the sea and rivers. The fish oil is considered as the good and healthy diet containing the omega-3 fatty acids, eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA), and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA), precursors to eicosanoids reducing inflammation over the body. The fish oil produces omega-3 fatty acids accumulating them from either consuming microalgae producing fatty acids, in the case of fishes like herring and sardines .  These fish  oil present in the fatty predatory fish which eats prey fish got accumulated omega-3 fatty acids from microalgae.  Such fatty predatory fish like mackerel, lake trout, flounder, albacore tuna and salmon have largest storage of omega-3 fatty acids which aids in the production of fish oil. Due to its positioning over the food chain these species accumulates toxic substances, not beneficial for fish oil as many consumers intake it. Seeing this fact FDA annonces the small consumption of these fish species like albacore tuna, shark, and swordfish containing toxic contaminants such as mercury, dioxin, PCBs and chlordane in their body.   More than 50 percent of the world fish oil production is also used for fed to farmed salmon. So the fish oil is having DHA Omega-3 vegetarian products produced from algae in the rivers.

Many people now turned to fish oil supplements having adequate omega-3 fatty acids. Several supplement formulations includes various other fatty acids such as omega-6 and omega-9 needed for fish oil production. So the beneficial part of fish oil like omega-6 is generally seen in varied food diets like cereals, whole grain bread, baked goods, fried foods and margarine. In this way fish oil's omega-6 supplementation users don't required . But the consumption of fish oil supplements have undergone scrutiny over the years. Government agencies such as Food Standards Agency of UK and the Food Safety Authority of Ireland reporting the PCB levels exceeding the strict new European highest limits in several fish oil brands in 2006 . For sharing the growing concern of contaminated fish oil supplements, International Fish Oil Standards program, the voluntary review process developed at the  University of Guelph.

After this the patented production purification processes existed to avoid pollutants and dioxins from the fish oil to match the levels far below the EU limits. This patented technology is also c alled as stripping technology.  The fish oil production stopped in several producing countries  except  Iceland in 2005.  In the year 2005 production of fish oil was approximately about 570 000 tonnes in five main exporting countries like Peru, Denmark, Chile, Iceland and Norway which was about 12% from the 6,50,000 tonnes production in 2004. now Peru remains the main fish oil producer across the globe having around one fourth of total fish oil production. So traders must read about fish oil usages along with side effects before making it as dietry supplement.