Environmental impacts of food

by Dr Neil Auchterlonie, Technical Director, IFFO

The current fascination with the environmental, especially climate change, impacts of food is not the challenge for aquaculture that it is for land animal protein production. The EAT-Lancet report emphasises this position.  Strangely, though, when we look at society as a whole, at least in the West, then the implications of the findings of the report and the way it has been portrayed in the media is to assume the apparent health and environmental benefits of eating less meat, replacing with and consuming more fruit and vegetables.
 

That is the simplistic way the report is often communicated, but of course it doesn’t actually reflect the full content of the 46 pages of text.  The report mentions the importance of seafood currently (3.1 billion people derive 20% of their daily intake of animal protein from aquatic systems), and states that aquaculture could “help steer production of animal source proteins towards reduced environmental effects and enhanced health benefits”. There is an enormous opportunity for aquaculture (and fisheries) to make more out of this narrative.

Food production strategy environmental impacts and product nutritional quality are intertwined. The rise of meat-free strategies, including consumption of meat substitutes or having meat-free dietary periods seems, in reality, to adopt principally a vegetarian or vegan approach to nutrition. This is a knee-jerk reaction to a publicly communicated issue, with a response that belies any comprehensive understanding of human nutritional requirements.

Even before the issue of environmental impacts of food became so widely acknowledged, there were some very good examples of how nutritional strategies impact human health. One need go no further than look at the inadequate consumption of long chain omega-3 fatty acids to understand how, even with the benefit of all the information and evidence regarding health benefits, consumption levels remain well below health advisory minima.  Now that food environmental impacts have risen up the agenda for the consumer, there is potential for additional nutritional effects. As is often the case with human nutrition, the issue is one of surviving or thriving – or adequate nutrition versus optimal nutrition, and the consumer is at the heart of these choices.

Read more, HERE.

The Aquaculturists

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