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Item type:Publication, Main challenges for measuring the sustainability of the marine ingredients industry: a systematic and critical review(Elsevier BV, 2026-02-01)The marine ingredients (MIs) industry is essential to the aquaculture sector, mainly providing fishmeal and fish oil to support animal feed and human nutrition. The exponential growth of aquaculture and the heavy reliance on finite marine resources pose significant sustainability challenges and highlight the need for more comprehensive and regionally adapted metrics beyond current Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) indicators and non-conventional LCA metrics. In this systematic review, we analyzed 48 literature studies that focus on the sustainability of MIs using rigorous criteria for data quality and indicator relevance under the Prisma methodology. Our findings indicate that the studies that are mainly based on conducting an LCA provide valuable insights into environmental performance, but are hindered by inconsistent metrics, limited data availability, and a lack of integration of economic, nutritional, and ethical dimensions in the sustainability analysis. Such limitations can lead to underestimate critical issues such as biodiversity loss, overfishing, habitat degradation, or the impact of illegal fishing, while overemphasizing short-term efficiency measures, like feed conversion ratio, or environmental impacts such as global warming. Additionally, emerging novel proteins and alternative uses for fish-derived byproducts, ranging from direct human consumption to high-value applications (bioactive compounds, cosmetics, etc.) to lower value products (like biofertilizers), remain largely unexplored, given the absence of holistic and flexible assessment tools. Thus, the presence of unregulated contaminants (including additives, antibiotics and microplastics), are not yet adequately addressed in most MIs studies, despite some recent methodological advancements. This review proposes the adoption of novel metrics, the standardization of assessment methods and the integration of multi-criteria decision analysis for LCA practitioners to better capture the complex and multifaceted challenges of MIs production, covering the way for more robust and reliable sustainability assessments within the aquaculture industry.1 - Some of the metrics are blocked by yourconsent settings
Item type:Publication, Fish for food or food for fish? Use of material flow analysis to optimize protein availability of seafood products for human consumption(Elsevier BV, 2026-06-01)Direct human consumption provides an additional 75% edible protein as compared to aquaculture return. • Aquaculture yields <27% edible biomass from total production. • Even at a feed conversion rate of 0.7, a 57% protein loss is identified. • From an economic perspective, direct consumption is preferred over aquafeed. • More than 7 kg of non-marine ingredients are needed to obtain 1 kg of farmed trout protein. The growing pressure on pelagic resources and the dilemma of redirecting high-nutritional whole fish to aquafeed, underscore the need for quantitative evidence to maximize marine-protein availability for human consumption. This study compares two scenarios with anchovy ( Engraulis spp. ) and tuna ( Thunnus spp .): 1) minimally processed marine biomass for direct human consumption (DHC); and, 2) whole-fish rendered into fishmeal and fish oil (FMFO) for aquafeeds (indirect human consumption), with trout ( Oncorhynchus mykiss ) as farmed specie. A material flow analysis was performed using 1 t of cleaned pelagic-fish ready for DHC as functional unit, with system boundaries spanning from wild landings to fish on the plate. Mass-protein balances were modeled with STAN software. Net relative protein-return, energy-return, and the relative-profitability indicators were calculated for each product-process. Results show that all indicators applied favor DHC, even under optimized feed conversion rates. In protein-efficiency terms, these findings corroborate that DHC of pelagic fish outperforms its use as aquafeed, making it the preferred strategy, especially in contexts of food insecurity and limited supplies of high-biological value protein.