USA: Chicken and farmed salmon have remarkably similar environmental footprints

Published Feb 14, 2023

Tridge summary

A study by UC Santa Barbara's National Center for Ecological Analysis & Synthesis, led by marine ecologist Ben Halpern, reveals that the environmental footprints of chickens and farmed salmon are surprisingly similar. The research, published in Current Biology, reveals that the vast majority of the environmental impact of these foods is concentrated in a small fraction of the planet, with the United States, China, and Brazil being the highest contributors for chicken, and Chile, Mexico, and China for salmon. Despite chicken having a larger environmental footprint due to its faster reproductive cycle and feeding habits, it is more efficient in terms of production. The study underscores the need for integrated food policies to promote sustainability, highlighting that chicken and salmon, while popular protein sources, have similar environmental impacts mainly due to their shared feed ingredients.

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Original content

We love our chicken. We love our salmon. Thanks to how we farm these two popular proteins, their environmental footprints are surprisingly similar. The key is in the feed, said UC Santa Barbara marine ecologist Ben Halpern, director of UCSB's National Center for Ecological Analysis & Synthesis, and an author of a paper that appears in the journal Current Biology. In an effort to tease out opportunities for reducing the substantial environmental pressures of global food production, he and an international team of colleagues took a deep look at how we raise these two highly popular animals for consumption, focusing in particular on dynamics between land and sea. "Chicken are fed fish from the ocean, just as are salmon, and salmon are fed crop products like soy, just as are chicken," Halpern said, in comparing industrially farmed broiler chickens, and farmed salmonids (salmon, marine trout and char). In addition ...

Source: Phys