1 research outputs found
Comparison of Asian Aquaculture Products by Use of Statistically Supported Life Cycle Assessment
We investigated aquaculture production
of Asian tiger shrimp, whiteleg
shrimp, giant river prawn, tilapia, and pangasius catfish in Bangladesh,
China, Thailand, and Vietnam by using life cycle assessments (LCAs),
with the purpose of evaluating the comparative eco-efficiency of producing
different aquatic food products. Our starting hypothesis was that
different production systems are associated with significantly different
environmental impacts, as the production of these aquatic species
differs in intensity and management practices. In order to test this
hypothesis, we estimated each system’s global warming, eutrophication,
and freshwater ecotoxicity impacts. The contribution to these impacts
and the overall dispersions relative to results were propagated by
Monte Carlo simulations and dependent sampling. Paired testing showed
significant (<i>p</i> < 0.05) differences between the
median impacts of most production systems in the intraspecies comparisons,
even after a Bonferroni correction. For the full distributions instead
of only the median, only for Asian tiger shrimp did more than 95%
of the propagated Monte Carlo results favor certain farming systems.
The major environmental hot-spots driving the differences in environmental
performance among systems were fishmeal from mixed fisheries for global
warming, pond runoff and sediment discards for eutrophication, and
agricultural pesticides, metals, benzalkonium chloride, and other
chlorine-releasing compounds for freshwater ecotoxicity. The Asian
aquaculture industry should therefore strive toward farming systems
relying upon pelleted species-specific feeds, where the fishmeal inclusion
is limited and sourced sustainably. Also, excessive nutrients should
be recycled in integrated organic agriculture together with efficient
aeration solutions powered by renewable energy sources