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> Fish farms regard them as waste.

I have only seen tilapia sold whole - the skin is one of the best parts when you fry them.

Same here. Not with just tilapia, but pretty much every fish.

How expensive is the sterilization process, though? That would be my primary concern if tilapia-skin bandages started to get widely available/mass-produced: that unscrupulous vendors would cut corners during sterilization, and then the burn victims would get nasty infections from remnant bacteria on the tilapia skin.

Dunno what method they use, but gamma irradiation is pretty cheap at scale

I think any farmed animal is or should have no waste. Even if it’s turned into cat food the skin is most definitely not just waste, there’s uses out there. However, if it is as cheap and readily available as cat food then that’s great for burn victims too.