Abstract
Fish and seafood consumption in Australia has been growing, yet the implications of this trend across the food system, from both a health and sustainability perspective have not been fully explored. This paper aims to map out the fish and seafood food system in Australia, linking production and consumption, to articulate challenges and opportunities for enhancing the sector’s contribution to future healthy and sustainable diets. We conducted a secondary analysis of publicly available datasets on fish and seafood production and consumption, triangulated and supplemented with peer-reviewed and grey literature on environmental, economic and social sustainability issues throughout the food system. A key challenge for health is the high proportion of fish and seafood consumed as discretionary food, particularly among children. Key challenges for sustainability include the narrow focus on environmental sustainability (with little consideration of the other domains), and the focus on production with little consideration for sustainability throughout post-harvest handling, processing, retail, distribution and consumption. Key opportunities for health and sustainability include the innovative use of processing and packaging technology to maximise nutritional quality; creation of markets and supply chains for a greater diversity of underutilised fish and seafood species and processing by-products; and reductions in waste and loss throughout the entire supply chain.
Highlights
The global food system has never been more advanced, and yet is considered a key driver of malnutrition in all its forms, as well as unprecedented environmental damage including land degradation, greenhouse gas emissions, water use, rapid deforestation and biodiversity loss [1,2].The adoption of healthy and sustainable diets and food systems is, increasingly recognised as a key strategy in addressing this dual challenge and achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) [3,4,5]
This paper aims to map out the fish and seafood food system in Australia, linking production and consumption to articulate challenges and opportunities for enhancing its contribution to future healthy and sustainable diets
We find that sustainability assessment frameworks currently used in Australia are narrowly focused on environmental aspects of production and fail to consider the economic and social aspects of sustainability, as well as sustainability throughout the remaining stages of the food supply chain
Summary
The global food system has never been more advanced, and yet is considered a key driver of malnutrition in all its forms, as well as unprecedented environmental damage including land degradation, greenhouse gas emissions, water use, rapid deforestation and biodiversity loss [1,2]. The adoption of healthy and sustainable diets and food systems is, increasingly recognised as a key strategy in addressing this dual challenge and achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) [3,4,5]. A major challenge, relates to the inherent complexity of food systems. A food system has been defined as “all the elements (environment, people, inputs, processes, infrastructures, institutions, etc.) and activities that relate to the production, processing, distribution, preparation and consumption of food, and the output of these activities, including socio-economic and environmental outcomes” [4].
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