Popular products generate significant ‘post-catch’ emissions, underscoring the need to measure what happens after fish are caught
University of California – Santa Cruz
Processing Alaskan pollock into fish sticks, imitation crab, and fish fillets generates significant greenhouse gas emissions, a new study reveals.
Credit: UC Santa Cruz
Fish sticks may be a tasty option for dinner, but are they good for the planet?
A new study of the climate impacts of seafood products reveals that the processing of Alaskan pollock into fish sticks, imitation crab, and fish fillets generates significant greenhouse gas emissions.
Post-catch processing generates nearly twice the emissions produced by fishing itself, which is typically where the analysis of the climate impact of seafood ends, according to the findings by researchers at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
“The food system is a significant source of global greenhouse gas emissions, and Alaskan pollock is one of the biggest fisheries in the world,” said Brandi McKuin, a postdoctoral researcher in environmental studies at UCSC. “These findings highlight the need to take a comprehensive approach to analyzing the climate impacts of the food sector.”
McKuin is the lead author on a new paper that appears online in the journal Elementa: Science of the Anthropocene. Titled “Climate Forcing by Battered-and-breaded Fillets and Crab-flavored sticks from Alaska Pollock,” the paper takes a detailed, comprehensive look at the climate impact of the seafood supply chain.
Alaskan pollock is sold as fillets and trim pieces that are used to make products like fish sticks and imitation crab, said McKuin. “It’s a huge market,” she said.
Unlike previous studies that have largely overlooked the downstream processing activities associated with Alaskan pollock, this study examined all the components of the supply chain, from fishing through the retail display case. The results identify “hot spots” where the seafood industry could concentrate its efforts to reduce its climate impacts, said McKuin.
The authors analyzed the climate impacts of transoceanic shipping of exported seafood products, and their study is the first to consider the climate effects of so-called “short-lived” pollutants in the carbon footprint of seafood.
They found that Alaskan pollock is a relatively fuel-efficient fishery: Pollock are caught in large nets called midwater trawls that are towed behind boats, hauling in a lot of fish in each landing, and reducing the climate impact of the fishing process. After the catch, Alaskan pollock are shipped for processing, and in some cases, transported on large container ships that burn copious amounts of fuel, including cheaper, poor-quality bunker fuel that produces high levels of sulfur particles.
McKuin noted that sulfur oxides from ship fuels have a climate-cooling effect. “Seafood products that are exported have a lower climate impact than domestic seafood products,” she said, adding that the climate impacts of shipping will change this year as new regulations for cleaner marine fuels take effect. “Shipping has a massive influence on climate and a shift to cleaner fuels will diminish the cooling effect from sulfur oxides and increase the climate impact of products that undergo transoceanic shipping, including seafood,” said McKuin.
Coauthor Elliot Campbell, a professor of environmental studies at UCSC, is a pioneer of data-driven methods of assessing the climate impact of food production.
“This study highlights the need to expand our view to encompass the entire supply chain,” he said. “It’s not enough to look just at fishing. The picture is much bigger, and it’s much more complicated.”
Organizations like Seafood Watch have developed tools to calculate the carbon footprint of seafood but haven’t included processing yet, noted McKuin, adding, “This study adds more data, so they can create a better tool.”
###
“transported on large container ships that burn copious amounts of fuel”
Either way, the fuel is paid for. It it’s cheap, it uses very little of it.
(Either that, of it’s a non price “price”: something that people are forced to produced or forced to integrate, for which there is no measurable price.)
I’ve got ” 6 breaded chicken parmigiana patties with tomato sauce” heating in the oven.
Apparently they now need a “spoon sauce over chicken”.
Luckily, I haven’t been living in a trench for months at a time.
It was only 100 years ago.
No schist Sherlock- it takes energy to make food. Why do you think the farmers in Europe are so angry.
Climate activists should be promoting a carbon free diet. It would fix the climate “emergency” very quickly
Carbon free sugar was marketed some time ago. I can’t recall the link.
Carbon free sugar surrogates:
https://www.google.com/search?q=sugar+surrogates&oq=sugar+surro&aqs=chrome.
Warning: health dangers!
Could be saccharines:
https://www.google.com/search?client=ms-android-huawei&sxsrf=ACYBGNRcKphXt0Cu6oWOmrgVkjmB4abhmw%3A1580545986706&ei=wjc1XrvbKoeAk74Prb-WkAM&q=saccharine&oq=saccharine&gs_l=mobile-gws-wiz-serp.
From the article: “This study highlights the need to expand our view to encompass the entire supply chain,” he said. “It’s not enough to look just at fishing. The picture is much bigger, and it’s much more complicated.”
I wonder what the greenhouse gas emissions would be for the jelly bean supply chain? The Dr Pepper supply chain?
We need to look at the bigger picture. Our scientists need more grant money so they can study these things. CAGW is serious business!
About the lead photo – Yuk!
Are the little green things made in a mold?
Maybe grown and picked by little old Amish women?
Search for – – –
Green Peas India Toxic Colouring agents
Don’t eat farmed salmon then. IMO, if you don’t grown or raise the food you eat you have no idea what is in it.
Why can’t we get to the route of the problem.
Cut the number of useless scientists and all that funding and only fund what may be of use to society.
What’s the carbon footprint of soya bean products eaten in China ?
Or eggs eaten in Burkino Faso ?
“These findings highlight the need to take a comprehensive approach to analyzing the climate impacts of the food sector.”
No they don’t.
What a load of pollocks
As Rape seed oil is marketed as CANOLA, so is Pollack called Box Fish, and avoided at our table. Contrariwise, highly favored is Burbot fillets, by catch of Whitefish.
“The food system is a significant source of global greenhouse gas emissions, and Alaskan pollock is one of the biggest fisheries in the world,” said Brandi McKuin, a postdoctoral researcher in environmental studies at UCSC. “These findings highlight the need to take a comprehensive approach to analyzing the climate impacts of the food sector.” – McKuin
The climate impact of the food sector? Does McKuin know anything about the food on her plate, or is she so disconnected from reality that she can’t put 1 and 2 together and get 3? So maybe we should go back to using horse-drawn plows, planters and combines and do all that pastoral crap, including gleaning, portrayed in Monet’s paintings? The real impact of food production is that modern food production of any kind feeds an entire world. She should be kissing the ground farmers and fishermen walk on.
I do have a great idea, but it will never happen: tell her if she wants food, she has grow it herself. Tell all those dimwitted, closed-minded Greenbeaners to do that. See just how long they last at it.
The more I see of this kind of twaddle, the more I believe there is a cognizance disconnection between what they natter on about, and the reality of the subject they address, which they cannot accept.
The STOOPID is truly strong with these people.
Isn’t the new mantra to “East Locally”
New billboards for the US southwest:
Tumbleweed – It’s what for dinner!
Food is recycled carbon. Grass gets CO2 from atmosphere. Cow eats grass. Human eats cow and exhales CO2. It is called the carbon cycle and eating a natural part of carbon cycle in this planet.
You can also do carbon capture and manufacture plastics or limestone.
I DO NOT CARE. Pass the fish sticks and you researchers can all spend 20 years on fishing boats with no access to publishing. No one takes my fish sticks without great bodily injury.
and what about the carbon footprint of calculating he carbon footprint of dinner….
dilemna…
Wasn’t there a category ridiculae?
The subtext here is that EAT-Lancet (WHO, guess who?) want Westerners to go plant-based and eliminate ALL bioavailable protein sources from their diet. They want a docile, infertile, emasculated, pharma-dependent and low-energy population who’ll be easily led into Agenda 30. The goal is to break down the physical basis of not only American wealthy, but of traditional American values like self-sufficiency, rugged can-do individualism, and demand for Liberty and personal responsibility for life choices.
When you need the pills to stay alive, and Big Brother dispenses the pills, they’ve got you over their barrel.
answer: who gives a s*it?
simple answer.
“Studies/papers” like this are the end products of giftless academics attempting to sustain a steady income. Any trivial BS can be transformed into something that “needs further research”.
Tom in Florida January 20, 2020 at 4:32 am
This is one of the reasons it pays to read WUWT. You learn new things all the time.
I had no idea that fish had fingers.
____________________________________
Fish already have the equivalent of “fingers”.
Land based mammals developed from marine fauna.
Evolution tends to develop from “already existing” – the shortest way.
____________________________________
“Do fish have fingers?
Of course they don’t, but they do have the genetic machinery to make fingers — something that shows how similar fish are to modern mammals.
DAVID GREENE, HOST: … And today Joe tells about research unveiling the evolutionary similarity between fish fins and mouse fingers.
https://www.google.com/search?q=how+many+fingers+have+fish+fins&oq=how+many+fingers+have+fish+fins&aqs=chrome.
____________________________________
Most mammals have 10 fingers + 10 toes. Symmetrical left/right up/down.
NOT e.g. 7 + 13.5
https://www.google.com/search?q=symmetric+forming+of+a+fetus+by&oq=symmetric+forming+of+a+fetus+by&aqs=chrome.
Lots of “studies” should have a disclaimer: https://www.google.com/search?q=disclaimer+warning+brain+damage&oq=disclaimer+warning+brain+damage+&aqs=chrome.
https://images.app.goo.gl/Enz13bQvxwHiDPUZ6