Environmental life cycle assessment of seafood production: A case study of trawler catches in Tunisia

Multi-product strategy to enhance the environmental profile of the canning industry towards circular economy

The sustainable and continued production of enough food to feed the entire world's population is one of the main concerns in the food industry. Spain, and in particular Galicia, which is an eminently fishing region characterised by the consumption of large quantities of fish, both fresh and processed, must face the challenge of shifting its seafood productive fabric towards a circular economy. To achieve this objective, the first task is to demonstrate that circular economy principles allow to reduce the environmental impacts associated with seafood production. In this sense, this study proposes the environmental evaluation of the skipjack tuna (Katsuwonus pelamis) value chain within a canning industry located in Galicia through the LCA methodology from an attributional perspective, including the valorisation processes for biowaste (edible and inedible by-products). Results indicate that the main crucial subsystems of the value chain are tuna fishing and the canning process, as it was expected considering other similar studies on seafood products. Moreover, this specific case study demonstrates that the multi-product strategy applied to the canning sector is environmentally viable. Thus, although the environmental impacts of the entire system are increased by including further valorisation operations, the environmental loads assigned to the main product (canned tuna) decrease compared to the one-product system by assigning environmental burdens to other value-added products (tuna pâté, fishmeal, and fish oil).

Life cycle assessment of fish and seafood processed products - A review of methodologies and new challenges

Life cycle assessment (LCA) has been widely applied in many different sectors, but the marine products and seafood segment have received relatively little attention in the past. In recent decades, global fish production experienced sustained growth and peaked at about 179 million tonnes in 2018. Consequently, increased interest in the environmental implications of fishery products along the supply chain, namely from capture to end of life, was recently experienced by society, industry and policy-makers. This timely review aims to describe the current framework of LCA and its application to the seafood sector that mainly focused on fish extraction and processing, but it also encompassed the remaining stages. An excess of 60 studies conducted over the last decade, along with some additional publications, were comprehensively reviewed; these focused on the main LCA methodological choices, including but not limited to, functional unit, system boundaries allocation methods and environmental indicators. The review identifies key recommendations on the progression of LCA for this increasingly important sustaining seafood sector. Specifically, these recommendations include (i) the need for specific indicators for fish-related activities, (ii) the target species and their geographical origin, (iii) knowledge and technology transfer and, (iv) the application and implementation of key recommendations from LCA research that will improve the accuracy of LCA models in this sector. Furthermore, the review comprises a section addressing previous and current challenges of the seafood sector. Wastewater treatment, ghost fishing or climate change, are also the objects of discussion together with advocating support for the water-energy-food nexus as a valuable tool to minimize environmental negativities and to frame successful synergies.

Status of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) in Africa

Life cycle assessment (LCA) has received attention as a tool to evaluate the environmental impacts of products and services. In the last 20 years, research on the topic has increased, and now more than 25,000 articles are related to LCA in scientific journals databases such as the Scopus database; however, the concept is relatively new in Africa, where the number of networks has been highlighted to be very low when compared to the other regions. This paper focuses on a review of life cycle assessments conducted in Africa over the last 20 years. It aims at highlighting the current research gap for African LCA. A total of 199 papers were found for the whole continent; this number is lower than that for both Japan and Germany (more than 400 articles each) and nearly equal to developing countries such as Thailand. Agriculture is the sector which received the most attention, representing 53 articles, followed by electricity and energy (60 articles for the two sectors). South Africa (43), Egypt (23), and Tunisia (19) were the countries where most of the research was conducted. Even if the number of articles related to LCA have increased in recent years, many steps still remain. For example, establishing a specific life cycle inventory (LCI) database for African countries or a targeted ideal life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) method. Several African key sectors could also be assessed further.

An in vitro study of the effect of carob (Ceratonia siliqua L.) leaf extracts on gilthead seabream (Sparus aurata L.) leucocyte activities. Antioxidant, cytotoxic and bactericidal properties

Carob leaves, the main residues of the carob tree, were investigated as a renewable and abundant source of bioactive compounds for fish aquaculture. Aqueous and ethanolic extracts obtained from carob leaves were characterized in terms of biochemical composition, antiradical and cytotoxic effects and immunostimulant and antibacterial activities. The ethanolic extract showed higher levels of total phenolics, flavonoids and condensed tannins and higher antioxidant activity than the aqueous extract. No significant immunostimulant effects were observed on gilthead seabream (Sparus aurata) head kidney leucocytes (viability, phagocytosis and respiratory burst activities and peroxidase content) after incubation for 24 h with different extracts. Furthermore, the ethanolic extracts used at 0.5, 0.75 and 1 mg mL^-1 and aqueous extracts at 1 g mL^-1 had a cytotoxic effect on PLHC-1 cells. When the bactericidal activity was tested against three fish pathogenic bacteria (Vibrio harveyi, Vibrio anguillarum and Photobacterium damselae) notable activity of the different extracts was detected against P. damselae at all three concentrations. A similar effect was demonstrated against V. haryeri when ethanolic extracts were used in the same range of concentrations. This work demonstrates interesting in vitro effects of carob leaf extracts and suggests it could be used as an alternative to chemical compounds with farmed fish. The concentration and nature of the extracts were very important in terms of any positive results.

Life Cycle Assessment of Nile Tilapia (Oreochromis niloticus) Farming in Kenyir Lake, Terengganu

This study presents results from a life cycle assessment (LCA) conducted following the CML-IA method on caged aquaculture of Nile tilapia (Oreochromis niloticus) species at Como River, Kenyir Lake, Terengganu, Malaysia. In this study, the greenhouse gas (GHG) estimation, calculated based on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 2006 Guidelines, showed that 245.27 C eq (1.69 Kg) of nitrate oxide (N2O) was emitted from the lake. The determination of LCA was conducted using several inputs, namely N2O, compositions of fish feed, materials used to build fish cages (infrastructure), main materials used during operation and several databases, namely Agri-footprint, Ecoinvent 3, European Reference Life-Cycle Database (ELCD), and Industry Data 2.0. The results show that feed formulation is the major contributor to potential environmental impact in aquaculture farming, at 55%, followed by infrastructure at 33% and operation at 12%. The feed formulation consisting of 53% broken rice contributed to marine ecotoxicity (MET), while those consisting of 44% fish meal and 33% soybean meal contributed to abiotic depletion (ABD) and global warming (GW), respectively. It is recommended that the percentage of ingredients used in feed formulation in fish farming are further studied to reduce its impacts to the environment.

Introducing the Green Protein Footprint method as an understandable measure of the environmental cost of anchovy consumption

In a global framework of growing concern for food security and environmental protection, the selection of food products with higher protein content and lower environmental impact is a challenge. To assess the reliability of different strategies along the food supply chain, a measure of food cost through the environmental impact-protein content binomial is necessary. This study proposes a standardized method to calculate the Green Protein Footprint (GPF) index, a method that assesses both the environmental impact of a food product and its protein content provided to consumers. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) was used to calculate the environmental impact of the selected food products, and a Life Cycle Protein Assessment (LCPA) was performed by accounting for the protein content along the supply chain. Although the GPF can be applied to all food chain products, this paper is focused on European anchovy-based products for indirect human consumption (fishmeal) and for direct human consumption (fresh, salted and canned anchovies). Moreover, the circular economy concept was applied considering the valorization of the anchovy residues generated during the canning process. These residues were used to produce fishmeal, which was employed in bass aquaculture. Hence, humans are finally consuming fish protein from the residues, closing the loop of the original product life cycle. More elaborated, multi-ingredient food products (salted and canned anchovy products), presented higher GPF values due to higher environmental impacts. Furthermore, the increase of food loss throughout their life cycle caused a decrease in the protein content. Regarding salted and canned products, the packaging was the main hotspot. The influence of the packaging was evaluated using the GPF, reaffirming that plastic was the best alternative. These results highlighted the importance of improving packaging materials in food products.