“When the going gets tough, Pittman gets going!”

Peter Lammertyn, sales manager at Pittman Seafoods, is relishing the start of the seafood exhibition season. Having just returned from Gulfood in Dubai, he is now looking forward to Seafood Expo Global (SEG) and the annual gathering of the Private Label Manufacturers’ Association (PLMA).
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Aquaculture’s importance as an edible protein source

Food is essential to human life. It provides the proteins, fats, carbohydrates, vitamins and minerals that we all need to grow and lead active, healthy lives. As such, it’s imperative that consumers everywhere have access to sufficient quantities of it at affordable prices.

Packed with essential nutrients, and through its rich diversity of species and product forms, seafood ranks among the healthiest food categories that we have, providing sustenance to billions of people around the world. In this regard, most health organisations have long advocated including fish or seafood in the human diet a minimum of two to three times a week.

 

Growing global contribution

While global seafood consumption has been on a consistent upward growth trend since the 1960s and now exceeds 20 kilos per capita, the contribution made by wild-capture fisheries to the overall fish supply has plateaued in recent decades, with most operations now at their maximum sustainable yield.

Fortunately, aquaculture has more than compensated. Today, the farming of aquatic products is widely regarded as one of our leading food supply sectors. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), of the 178 million tonnes of seafood produced worldwide in 2020, aquaculture provided 88 million tonnes or 49% of the total. The FAO determines that farmed production accounted for 56% of the amount of aquatic animal food production available for human consumption.

Looking ahead, the UN body forecasts that aquaculture will continue to be the driving force behind the future seafood supply growth. It’s projected to break the 100 million tonne threshold for the first time in 2027 before going on to reach a level of 106 million tonnes by 2030.

Meeting market expectations

To live up to its status as an essential contributor to world food security, the sector’s component businesses and farms have been actively scaling-up their production. A lot of these endeavours have been supported with the on-streaming of new technologies, ranging from multi-million-dollar land-based and offshore farms to novel feed ingredients, and much more besides.

From a sustainability standpoint, aquaculture is a far more efficient protein producer than any land animal farming industry. Additionally, these foods typically have a much smaller carbon footprint than those of other animal-based foods.

Alongside increasing the volume of food that it’s making available, aquaculture has also proven it can meet consumer expectations in terms of producing foods that consumers actually want to eat, and also providing the assurances that a product is what it claims to be, that it’s safe to consume, and that no social or environmental risks have been taken. Farmed seafoods also often represent a more affordable source of protein – cheaper and more accessible than other animal meats.

By keeping on top of shifting consumer and market demands and progressively introducing new technologies and innovations as they become financially feasible, whilst also demonstrating its sustainability credentials, aquaculture remains fully on course to be an even more important contributor to our diets long into the future.

Emerging trends in Europe’s salmon and mussel farming sectors

Over 500 aquatic species are farmed around the world, making aquaculture an extraordinarily diverse form of food production, responsible for a huge range of seafood products, many of which are traded internationally. In Western Europe some of the most widely farmed – and popular to consume – species include Atlantic salmon and mussels: species that can be grown in similarly temperate locations. (more…)

Seafood and the UN’s SDGs

Sustainably farmed and wild-caught seafood can play an important role in the drive to achieve the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals. The UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) aim to ensure global peace and prosperity, while protecting the planet. Launched in 2015 as part of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, they were duly adopted by all UN Member States as a pledge to work together for a better world, with a target to achieve the goals by 2030. (more…)

Why sanctions are causing seafood prices to soar

The legacy of Covid and the ongoing Russian-Ukraine war have combined to create significant rises in the cost of living in most countries in the course of 2022. And the price of seafood, like that of most commodities, has surged. However, there are still options for sourcing sustainable seafood without breaking the bank.

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Pittman Seafoods wins award at 2022 MSC Sustainable Seafood Awards

In our newsletter on Sustainable Seafood Week, we highlighted our sustainable approach. Winning the Best Belgian Supplier category in our sector at the MSC Sustainable Seafood Awards underscores this once again. The awards were hosted in our country for the first time this year.The MSC awards are a boost for companies striving hard to improve their sustainability every day. Naturally, we at Pittman Seafoods are very happy to be recognized in this way. (more…)

Why fish is so important to global food security

Food is essential to human life. As such, it must be provided to consumers everywhere in sufficient quantities in sustainable, stable and resilient ways. And yet, according to the latest estimates from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nation (FAO), contained in its report The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2021, between 720 and 811 million people in the world faced hunger in 2020 – as many as 161 million more than in 2019, while nearly 2.37 billion people didn’t have access to adequate food that year – an increase of 320 million people in just one year. 
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