Session: Fisheries

Fresh, Frozen or Smoked? - The Impacts of Seafood Processing Choices
Ulf Gunnar Sonesson,^*   SIK - The Swedish Institute for Food and Biotechnology
Anna Flysjo,   SIK - The Swedish Institute for Food and Biotechnology
Astrid J. Scholz,   Ecotrust, Portland OR, USA
Peter Horst Tyedmers,   School for Resources and Environemntal Studies, Dalhousie University, Halifax Canada

Environmental impact of food products occurs throughout the products life cycle, but for the absolute majority of products the impact are largest in the primary production, e.g. agriculture and fishery. In certain cases the later stages in the chain can contribute significantly, depending on level of processing and packaging but most critical transports. The product form often decides how the product is processed, packed and transported.

In the present study, an LCA comparing different product forms of wild caught Alaskan salmon was performed. The three products where fresh fillets, frozen fillets and smoked side. The functional unit (FU) was one single serving (225 g, 8 oz) of salmon at the consumers table in San Francisco. The place of processing was Cordova Alaska; an important Salmon harbour. Data for fishery and processing was inventoried through surveys and direct contacts with fishermen and processors. The differences between products were; the fresh fillet was flown to Seattle and then trucked, the frozen and smoked salmon was shipped to Seattle and trucked. More differences where in packaging, need of frozen/chilled supply chains and in processing. Five environmental impact categories were included in the study, but a selection is done here.

The results showed large differences in energy use and emissions of potential global warming potential. The lowest impact was from the smoked salmon, 11 MJ/FU, and 620 g CO₂-eq/FU. The frozen fillet used 16 MJ/FU and emitted 1000 g CO₂-eq/FU. Finally, the fresh product used 24 MJ/FU and emitted 1610 CO₂-eq/FU. The most important difference was that of transport mode, which explained more or less the whole difference to the smoked product. The smoked product did not require any home cooking which more than compensated fro the higher energy use in industrial processing. The frozen fillet had as low transport impacts as the smoked, but used more energy for the frozen supply chain; storage in wholesale and retail. General for all three products was that home transports are a large energy user, and packaging is different but does not contribute much to the life cycle impacts.

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