Abstract
The aquaculture sector is the fastest growing food production industry, with sea bass and sea bream consisting important exporting goods in the Mediterranean region. This work presents results of a life cycle assessment of Mediterranean sea bass and sea bream, based on primary data collected from a Greek producer. The system boundary included fish feed production and the rearing operation, as well as the packaging and delivery processes, which were neglected in preceding literature studies. The life cycle inventory developed addressed previous data gaps in the production of Mediterranean aquaculture species. Comparison to preceding studies revealed differences on the production inventories and identified methodological choices leading to variability. Packaging and delivery processes were found to contribute approximately 40% towards the global warming score. The production of both sea bass and sea bream was shown to come with high eutrophication impacts occurring from the rearing stage. The feed production was identified as the most environmental impact intensive process throughout the life cycle. Sea bass came with lower environmental impacts per unit live mass, which was reversed when the species were compared on a protein basis. The replicable and transparent model presented here, contributes towards the more accurate quantification of the environmental impacts associated with Mediterranean aquaculture species and supports efforts aiming to promote environmental protection through dietary change.
Highlights
Today’s food supply chains are responsible for a quarter of the total anthropogenic greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions and for significant terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems degradation [1,2]
It is crucial to include this contribution in the determination of the environmental impacts of sea bream and sea bass production and this study provides the means to do that
A life cycle inventory for sea bream and sea bass production was constructed based on primary data from a large-scale producer in Greece
Summary
Today’s food supply chains are responsible for a quarter of the total anthropogenic greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions and for significant terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems degradation [1,2]. Fish farming is the fastest growing food production industry [8] and offers a viable option in mitigating the enormous amounts of GHG emissions caused by the beef sector, while avoiding the overexploitation of marine fish populations [9]. Mediterranean aquaculture species, sea bream (Sparus aurata) and sea bass (Dicentrarchus labrax), are expected to reach a market volume of 305,000 tonnes by 2030, experiencing a market growth of 4% per year [10]. The current dominant fish farming country in Europe, is expected to double its production capacity reaching 235,000 tonnes. The growth of Mediterranean aquaculture species production has raised concerns about negative environmental impacts related to farming, such as impacts on water and bottom sediments quality, as well as benthic faunal impact [11,12], interaction with critical or sensitive habitats and species (e.g., seagrass meadows) and with wildlife [13,14,15]
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