Aquatic Food Loss and Waste from Production to Consumption: United States Case Study

Food loss and waste (FLW) is a major challenge to food system sustainability, including aquatic foods. Few data exist on aquatic FLW outside of small-scale fisheries, with major gaps in aquaculture species that make up half of global production. We investigated aquatic FLW in the food supply of the United States (US), the largest importer of aquatic food globally. We show that there are significant differences in FLW among species, production technology, origin, and stage of supply chain. We estimate that the total FLW was 22.7%, significantly lower than the 50% earlier reported in the literature, illustrating the importance of applying a disaggregated approach. Production losses from imports contribute over a quarter of total FLW, which strongly illustrates the importance of implementing systems approaches and multinational efforts to reduce FLW. The findings inform prioritization of solutions, including areas of needed innovations, government incentives, policy change, infrastructure and equity.