Certifying farmed seafood

Seafood is an important component of the world’s food basket and provides 3.1 billion people with about 20 per cent of their daily intake of animal protein (FAO 2016). It is particularly important for the world’s poor where fish eaten whole constitute a crucial source of essential micronutrients (Beveridge et al. 2013; Béné et al. 2015; Thilsted et al. 2016). With 90 per cent of global wild fish stocks being either overfished or maximally utilized, seafood extraction from the wild has reached a ceiling (FAO 2016) and even if fisheries are fully rebuilt (Sumaila et al. 2012; Costello et al. 2016), the continued expansion necessary to meet expected future demand of seafood must come primarily from aquaculture. This increasing need, as well as its potential positive contribution to the overall food portfolio (Troell et al. 2014), has led to aquaculture being the fastest growing food production sector in the world. Despite signs of slowed growth its contribution to the future seafood supply is expected to double within 30 years (Waite et al. 2014). Such rapid development can, however, also come at a price, with negative environmental and social impacts including direct and indirect habitat destruction, biodiversity loss and wasteful resource usage through detrimental fishing for feed ingredients and also social displacement (Naylor et al. 2000; Cao et al. 2015). Brackish water aquaculture on terrestrial land suitable for agriculture can lead to soil salinization (Paprocki and Cons 2014) and conversion of coastal wetlands, e.g. mangrove forest (Hamilton and Lovette 2015), to loss of key ecosystem services, for instance fisheries production, carbon sequestration, water purification and protection from storms (Barbier 2007; Walters et al. 2008; Mcleod et al. 2011). A steady supply of environmentally sustainable feed from terrestrial and marine origin is also a key challenge for a continued growth of the aquaculture sector (Gephart et al. 2017; Troell et al. 2017). Additional negative environmental challenges include leakage of nutrients and chemicals (Islam 2005; Burridge et al. 2010), spread of invasive species (Beveridge et al. 1994), diseases (Krkošek et al. 2007) and emissions of greenhouse gases, for instance related to energy consumption (Pelletier et al. 2011).