Photo: Mark Finch via Flickr; Creative Commons license
A first-time comprehensive study of the lifecycle of salmon consumption brings into question some notions about how to think about what we eat, especially in terms of long-term sustainability: “Even food has a lifecycle, and the world must learn to comprehend the full costs of it in order to design reliable, resilient food systems to feed a world population that’s forecast to grow to 9 billion in less than 40 years” note the report’s co-authors from Ecotrust, Dalhousie University and the Swedish Institute for Food and Biotechnology. Life Cycle Assessment is the systematic examination of a product’s full environmental impact; in this case the study examined “how salmon are caught in the wild, what they’re fed when farmed, how they’re transported, how they’re consumed, and how all of this contributes to both environmental degradation and socioeconomic benefits.”
This is the first comprehensive Life Cycle Assessment of a food, and it provides a valuable window on the complex effects arising from how we fulfill the basic need to eat. Salmon was chosen for the study because it is widely available year-round and researchers could study impacts of both wild-caught and farmed salmon.
Beyond ‘Food Miles’
The Life Cycle Assessment looked at multiple aspects of salmon production, processing, distribution and even preparation, and concludes that rather than worrying about metrics like “food miles,” which only measure the relative distance to table from where a food was produced, greater benefits can be achieved by a fuller understanding of key aspects of food production and distribution. The argument is key, since food production is the single largest source of environmental degradation in the world. The report claims “We offer an example of a multi-dimensional approach to seafood sustainability, considering local ecosystem, social welfare and global environmental factors, as applied to an icon of the global food marketplace.”
Swimming Against the Tide?
The researchers point to far reaching effects of energy-intensive production and distribution methods to conclude: “Across salmon production systems — and all food systems — the world is often swimming against the tide. Instead of working with nature, people work against it, chasing fish in the open ocean with big diesel engines or substituting energy demanding pumping and water treatment for free ecosystem services in salmon farming. We can and must do better than this and start to swim with the tide.” However a simple switch to farmed from wild salmon is not recommended because “growing salmon in land-based farms can increase total greenhouse gas emissions ten-fold over conventional farming, depending on how and where the farming is conducted.”
One recommendation of the report is that the consumption of frozen salmon needs to increase dramatically to decrease the negative environmental effects of shipping the fish by air, yet the atmospheric damage from shipping cargo by sea has also been documented; in other words, tradeoffs must be made. There are several interesting points here, but the most fascinating to me is the limited view of our options. Rather than simply figuring out how to produce and consume salmon sustainably, what about considering not eating salmon at all? Is there a substitutable product that would be more sustainable? What would a comparable analysis of soy beans show?
From Data to Action
It is tempting to confuse providing data with providing answers, though of course accurate data is vital to intelligent decision making. Questions arise constantly when analyzing a system with as many variables as which kind of fish one can extract and consume with the least amount of harm to people, planet and profit (not to mention the fish itself!).
What’s a conscious consumer to do? All this data can be paralyzing, and the temptation to reach for simple answers is overwhelming. The one thing we can be sure of is that there are no easy answers to feeding the world’s people while caring for the planet. This study is another small step in the direction of fully understanding the impact of our everyday choices in something so basic as food.
How do you decide what to eat? Any guidelines, thoughts, or warnings?
A version of this post originally appeared on Care2.
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