If you follow the cultivated meat industry, you probably know that 2019 was a bigyear for cultivatedseafood, and 2020 is shaping up to be even bigger. Here at GFI, we have a couple of seafood-related announcements of our own!
The challenge at hand and why we need cultivated seafood
The health of our oceans is at risk, and if we continue on our present course we are looking at both massive biodiversity loss and challenges to global food security. In 2015, 33% of fish stocks were classified as overfished. A further 60% were fished at the maximum sustainable level. These numbers are worrying, to say the least, given that global seafood demand is projected to grow by 30% over 2010 levels by 2030. Only 7% of fisheries around the world are estimated to be underfished, thereby making it unlikely that we can meet this additional projected demand through wild-caught seafood.
Even if we were able to increase supply to meet this demand, both wild-caught and farmed seafood pose additional challenges. Bottom trawling and other destructive fishing methods threaten our marine ecosystems through bycatch and habitat destruction. In areas where aquaculture is not well regulated, there have been significant challenges, including released waste products, irresponsible antibiotic use, contamination, animal welfare concerns, human rights violations, and scalability hurdles. Although there are producers making strides when it comes to sustainability, these players represent only a portion of the seafood supplied around the world. Better alternatives are desperately needed to supplement current production methods and to replace the more harmful ones.
To read the rest of the story, please go to: Good Food Institute
