Last month, the website Epicurious announced it would no longer publish recipes that include beef in their ingredient list “in an effort to encourage more sustainable cooking.” Specifically, the website cites the greenhouse gas emissions associated with beef production as the reason for cutting beef from its recipes. Alongside other recent trends like the rise of plant-based meat, this announcement reflects increasing interest in limiting the carbon footprint of our diet. So where does aquaculture eco-certification fit into this picture?
When it comes to food, climate conscious consumerism is nothing new. It’s been 15 years since eating local food was popularized by books like The Omnivore’s Dilemma and the 100-Mile Diet. Beyond specifically climate-focused food sustainability trends, sustainability certifications and ecolabels have been around since the early 1980s. The first eco-certification programs and ecolabels were organic and sustainable agriculture labels. Some of these later expanded to include aquaculture, and eventually aquaculture-specific certifications and labels were established. These certifications cover a wide range of issues from local environmental impacts to worker safety and animal welfare, but what about impacts on climate change?
As it turns out, carbon footprints are rarely included as part of the eco-certification of seafood. Some aquaculture schemes require the collection of data that allow for calculation of energy use and carbon footprint, but with no threshold for climate impact that would prevent a farm from being certified. Although the carbon footprint of farmed seafood is considered low in comparison to terrestrial livestock, farming operations, the production of feed for fed species, and transport of product still require energy resulting in greenhouse gas emissions.
Just how big is the carbon footprint of farmed seafood? Where estimates of carbon footprint per kilogram of protein for categories like pork or poultry are relatively consistent, the diversity of aquaculture species and systems in which they are raised or grown makes it difficult to generalize about the climate impact of farmed seafood. Different species and systems have different carbon footprints. For example, bivalves have a low carbon footprint, and seaweeds have a negative carbon footprint. For farmed fish that require feed, fish feed itself is the largest contributor to the carbon footprint of the farming production cycle. Amongst aquaculture systems, land-based recirculating aquaculture systems (RAS) use electricity to pump water and maintain an environment suitable for fish, which can lead to a higher carbon footprint for both freshwater and marine fish raised in RAS systems compared to pond and marine cage systems.
Even though climate change is trending in consumer consciousness, there are a lot of other considerations when it comes to choosing what ends up on your plate. The price of food, access, health, and tradition are important factors, as well as some of the issues represented in eco-certification like local environmental impacts and social responsibility. As more people consider the climate footprint of their dinner, farmed seafood might be a good choice, but there are just as many reasons to choose seafood (or anything else) for dinner as there are fish in the sea.
Photo by Jacky Watt on Unsplash
