Use of life cycle assessment (LCA) to compare the environmental impacts of aquaculture and agri-food products

This paper aims to explore the potential as well as limitations of using Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) for comparing environmental impacts associated with aquaculture and other agri-food products. LCA has been used to assess environmental impacts, to identify environmentally-friendlier farming systems, to support environmental improvement, to designate benchmarking, and to develop eco-labelling criteria. However, its main limitations are related to specific impact categories attached to aquaculture and agri-food products that are not yet included in the current LCA methodology. The noninclusion of temporal and geographical differences as well as social and economic aspects are some of the shortcomings of LCA which is primarily an environmental assessment tool. Moreover, LCA results are often different when using different functional units. To overcome these constraints, it is suggested to use the normalization of the nutrients gained per kg of product consumed with the daily nutritional values required. It is concluded that the life cycle approach should be considered in policy development and LCA can be used to provide decision-supporting information to guide sustainable consumption and production of food products. INTRODUCTION Food is one of the core elements for sustainable development of our society. Food products are also the most important commodities traded in the world and the food market chains are continually being extended. However, food production systems both from agriculture and aquaculture (including marine fisheries) have been criticised