Aquatic Food Loss and Waste from Production to Consumption: United States Case Study

Abstract

Food loss and waste (FLW) is a major challenge to food system sustainability, including aquatic foods. Few data exist on aquatic FLW outside of small-scale fisheries, with major gaps in aquaculture species that make up half of global production. We investigated aquatic FLW in the food supply of the United States (US), the largest importer of aquatic food globally. We show that there are significant differences in FLW among species, production technology, origin, and stage of supply chain. We estimate that the total FLW was 22.7%, significantly lower than the 50% earlier reported in the literature, illustrating the importance of applying a disaggregated approach. Production losses from imports contribute over a quarter of total FLW, which strongly illustrates the importance of implementing systems approaches and multinational efforts to reduce FLW. The findings inform prioritization of solutions, including areas of needed innovations, government incentives, policy change, infrastructure and equity.

Application of the food-energy-water nexus to six seafood supply chains: hearing from wild and farmed seafood supply chain actors in the United States, Norway, and Vietnam

“…The quantitative data we collected on the six seafood supply chains are not reported in this paper, but just as the qualitative data contextualized the quantitative data, the quantitative data was used to check and improve our understanding of the qualitative data. Mixed-method and quantitative results from the larger study have been published (Brown et al, 2022;Scroggins et al, 2022;Viglia et al, 2022a,b;Love et al, 2023a) and other results are forthcoming.…”

“…The second set of questions focused on energy use and covered the same topics. Interviewers also asked questions about the amount of seafood that is wasted at each supply chain stage, and those results are reported elsewhere (Love et al, 2023a). The final questions were about general challenges facing the business or sector and how the business prepares for future challenges.…”