New seafood threat emerges: waste

Overfishing, pollution and climate change are threatening global seafood resources. And now another threat has been identified that is closer to home — consumer waste.

According to research from the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future (CLF), as much as 47% of the edible US seafood supply is lost each year, and consumers are the biggest culprit.

The findings, published in the November issue of Global Environmental Change, come as food waste in general has been in the spotlight and concerns have been raised about the sustainability of the world’s seafood resources.

In the US and around the world, people are being advised to eat more seafood, but overfishing, climate change, pollution, habitat destruction and the use of fish for other purposes besides human consumption threaten the global seafood supply.

The study analysed the food waste issue by focusing on the amount of seafood lost annually at each stage of the food supply chain and at the consumer level. The researchers estimated the US edible seafood supply at approximately 4.7 billion lb (2.1 billion kg) per year, of which 2.3 billion lb (1 billion kg) is wasted. 330 million lb (149.7 million kg) is lost in distribution and retail, 573 million lb (260 million kg) is lost when commercial fishers catch the wrong species of fish and then discard it (a concept called bycatch) and a staggering 1.3 billion lb (589.7 million kg) is lost at the consumer level.

This image shows from sea to table to trash how seafood is wasted. Image credit: Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future.

To illustrate the magnitude of the loss, the authors estimate this lost seafood could contain enough protein to fulfil the annual requirements for as many as 12 million people.

The 2010 US Dietary Guidelines recommended increasing seafood consumption to 225 g per person per week and consuming a variety of seafood in place of some meat and poultry. Under current conditions, achieving those levels would require doubling the US seafood supply, the researchers said.

But waste reduction has the potential to support increased seafood consumption without further stressing aquatic resources, said Roni Neff, PhD, director of the Food System Sustainability & Public Health Program at CLF and an assistant professor with the Bloomberg School of Public Health. She said focusing on prevention strategies involving governments, businesses and consumers can reduce seafood loss and create a more efficient and sustainable seafood system.

The researchers offer several approaches to reduce seafood waste along the food chain from catch to consumer. Suggestions range from limiting the percentage of bycatch that can be caught at the production level to packaging seafood into smaller portion sizes at the processing level to encouraging consumer purchases of frozen seafood.