"We continued to benefit from better animal nutrition sales prices which helped us generate our third consecutive quarter of consolidated gross margin expansion and increased earnings versus last year's first quarter. This was achieved despite higher cost per unit of sales associated with the low fish yields in the 2012 fishing season," commented Bret Scholtes, Omega Protein's President and Chief Executive Officer. "We are encouraged by the progress in our human nutrition segment in the first quarter as sales of our OmegaActiv concentrated fish oil continued to grow and we expanded into the dairy protein market with our acquisition of Wisconsin Specialty Protein. We believe our human nutrition segment growth initiatives will drive improved consolidated margins in the long-term."