Fish and seafood
When it comes to fish and seafood, it is more difficult to calculate the GHG footprint. It can vary greatly depending on the species and how it is caught.
Farmed prawns have a much higher footprint (18.2kg of CO2e per 100g) than farmed fish (6.0kg of CO2e). This is because mangrove forests, which store huge amounts of carbon, are often destroyed and converted into prawn farms.
But farmed bivalves, including mussels, oysters, scallops and clams, have a much lower GHG, about six times lower than farmed prawns and roughly 3.5 times lower than farmed fish,says Jessica Gephart, assistant professor in environmental science at the American University in Washington DC.
In 2021, Gephart and her colleagues analysed the environmental impact of seafood across a range of factors, including greenhouse gas emissions, pollution and freshwater use.
Farmed bivalves scored the best across the board. However, bivalves caught in the wild did not perform nearly as well when it came to greenhouse gas emissions – they emit five to 10 times more emissions as their farmed counterparts, says Gephart.
Farmed bivalves don’t require animal feed as they filter nutrients from the water and can be harvested without a large amount of energy. Wild bivalves are often caught by dredging – which involves towing large, rigid nets along the seafloor. It’s a carbon intensive process which disturbs carbon stored in the sediment and results in the release of CO2, which acidifies the ocean.
One study estimates that seabed dredging produces as much as one billion tonnes of CO2 annually – equivalent to global aviation emissions and greater than those of Germany.
Lab-grown protein
From cellular meat, which uses cells harvested from live animals, to plant-based meat made from soy or pea protein, and cow-free dairy produced using precision fermentation, we now have a huge range of meat and dairy alternatives to choose from if we wish to avoid animal products.
But how do they compare to…
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