Life Cycle Assessment as applied to environmental choices regarding farmed or wild-caught fish
Résumé
Fish production is facing increasing worldwide demand while fish landings are plateauing. Fish production is the only kind of animal production that is still dominated by extractive activity, endangered because of overexploitation of natural resources and a rearing activity with a rapid expansion. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), which estimates local- to global-scale environmental impacts, has been adapted to seafood production systems. Scientific publications increasingly propose methodological improvements and case-study applications of LCA in the fishery and aquaculture sectors, with the combined objectives of better describing and understanding their biophysical interactions with the environment and supporting decision-making and eco-labelling of seafood products. In particular, the development of innovative indicators better defines impacts of fisheries on the marine ecosystem (e.g., benthos damage, by-catch, biotic resource use). Nevertheless, the lack of consensus about methodological questions (e.g., co-product allocation rules, system boundary definition) weakens comparisons between studies and limits the generalization of results and dissemination of methods. This paper reviews published applications of LCA to farmed and wild-caught fish.