Organic Aquaculture

Organic food markets are rapidly growing. Aquaculture and commercial fishing are attempting to create brand identities within or related to organic markets. According to The Washington Post (2009), organic food and beverage sales in America have risen from $1 billion in 1990 to about $20 billion in 2007. Sales of organic meat alone have grown from $33 million in 2002 to $364 million in 2007. If the USDA does decide to allow farm-raised fish into the ranks of USDA-certified organic products, this could open the door to a huge increase in profits for the aquaculture industry as well as give them a huge leg up over the commercial fishing industry.
Organic produce is grown without fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides and does not include genetically modified organisms (GMOs). Organic livestock is fed a completely organic diet, is antibiotic free and does not include animal GMOs. It is more difficult to determine an organic standard for fish than for produce and livestock. Fish that are vegetarian may require different standards than carnivorous fish, as will bottom feeders. Also, environmentalists believe that because farm-raised fish tend to live in cramped conditions more water pollution may occur. This may cause the fish to be unsustainable and unhealthy, so calling them organic misrepresents the product. Many fish farmers are of the view that the growing seafood demand and depletion of wild fisheries creates a favorable market for farm-raised seafood. They feel that a farm-raised product based on predominantly natural inputs should be certified organic or a close equivalent that strongly suggests “organic” and “natural.” Currently, adherents of strict application of organic agricultural standards to aquaculture hold that the principles of organic aquaculture must include:

•    Careful selection of sites for aquaculture farms.
•    Protection of adjacent ecosystems.
•    Active avoidance of conflicts with other users of the aquatic resources (e.g., fishermen) .
•    Prohibition of chemicals (e.g.. as anti-fouling agents in net pens) .
•    Natural remedies and treatments in the case of disease.
•    Feedstuff from organic agriculture.
•    Fishmeal and -oil in feed derived from by-products of fish processed for human consumption (no dedicated "feed fishery").
•    Prohibition of GMOs, neither in feedstuff, nor in the stock itself.
•    Processing according to organic standards.

Debate on the topic of “organic aquaculture” began in 2000 when the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) named a task-force advisory panel, National Organics Standards Board (NOSB), to the USDA's Agricultural Marketing Service to evaluate requests from fish farmers for organic eligibility. The task force ruled out the possibility that wild fish could be labeled organic on the grounds that catching wild animals isn’t agriculture. They did recommend that farm-raised fish could be labeled organic as long as their diets were almost entirely organic plant material. Herbivorous fish, e.g., carp, tilapia and some shellfish (mollusks and crustaceans) are far easier to categorize and certify with respect to organic standards. Feed for them is already being produced in accordance with the tenants of organic agriculture or can be produced using algae, sunlight and simple nutrients within a closed system.
Eventually, rules far less stringent than those for organic agriculture were proposed. These included three options for what “organic” fish could eat. Included: an entirely organic diet; non-organic fish during a seven-year transition period while fish farms shifted to organic fish meal; or non-organic fish meal from what were judged to be “wild-sustainable” fisheries. Sustainable fisheries are those where fish stocks may fluctuate but do not decline over time.
In November 2008 NOSB recommended the USDA certify some farm-raised fish as organic.  This did exclude all wild-caught fish from eligibility. NOSB came under immediate fire for approving relaxed standards for organic labeling. Under the NSOB proposal, farmed fish could carry the label even if their diets included up to one-fourth wild-caught fish and fish bi-product, perhaps from non-sustainable fisheries, and included other animal and plant feeds not produced in accordance with organic agriculture principles, as long as none of this material was from endangered species.
This ruling was primarily the result of trying to develop an “organic” standard for carnivorous fish. Carnivorous fish pose a problem because the fish they eat usually are not farmed organically. Often times they are wild-harvest feed fish or a wild-harvest or animal-agriculture bi-product. The NOSB recommendation was met with opposition from environmentalists and the commercial fishing industry because the criteria for calling fish organic included feeding non-organic feed (currently, certified-organic livestock have to be fed 100% organic feed).  Additionally, some farmed-fish fed wild-fish fishmeal has exhibited elevated dioxin, mercury and other toxin levels.  Fish grown in open-water net pens are said to be a pollution (from concentrated waste), disease, parasite and potential genetic-pollution source for the water system and its wild-fish populations.
According to a Consumer Reports magazine food labeling poll, some 74 percent of consumers are concerned about environmental pollution from “organic” fish. The poll also showed that 91 percent of consumers want contaminants in fish to be absent or present only at very low levels. Of course, consumers vote with their dollars for the products that are most valuable to them. Will consumers be able to discern their product origin and content from sound descriptive labeling, including perhaps “organic”? The New York Times in "Free or Farmed, When Is a Fish Really Organic?" (2006) stated that for these and many other reasons, if the USDA does create a standard for organic fish, it may well be so controversial, challenged, appealed and counter-appealed, that it could be many years before fish labeled USDA-certified organic would be in local grocery stores.
At the center of the debate is the open-water net-pen salmon-farming industry. It is one of the most controversial areas of aquaculture, yet with dwindling wild stock, it is seen as a way to produce highly-valuable high-quality products on a cost-effective scale. Salmon farming is potentially very highly profitable especially if the fish command the premiums that result from USDA-organic certification. With the feed input accounting for the majority of material and energetic inputs and emissions, understanding its overall role in production sustainability and environmental impact is deemed central to understanding open-water net-pen salmon farming’s overall environmental impact and biophysical sustainability.
The world-wide use of wild-caught fishmeal and fish oil in aquaculture feeds for carnivorous fish (particular salmon and to a lesser extent trout) has been criticized as inherently unsustainable and a source of persistent organic pollutants (particularly PCBs and dioxins) by most environmental groups (New York Times; Choking on Growth? 2007). The aquaculture industry consumes approximately 46 percent and 81 percent of the global fishmeal and fish-oil supply, respectively. Furthermore, the ever-changing nature and complexity of global marine fisheries questions the sustainable use of fishmeal and oil and makes their substitution to animal-agriculture bi-product or vegetable proteins one of the greatest challenges facing the aquaculture industry in general and “organic” producers in particular.