A new joint report by World Bank, FAO and the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) entitled "Fish to 2030: Prospects for Fisheries and Aquaculture” looks at prospects for fisheries and aquaculture and suggests that aquaculture will provide close to two thirds of global food fish consumption by 2030. It highlights the continuing role of  China as a major driver of aquaculture demand, and charts the decline in the relative importance of capture fisheries.

Farmagaddeon describes the effects of livestock intensification (“factory farming”) around the world. It makes the case against industrialised agriculture arguing that it affects not only the welfare of farmed animals but also increasingly our countryside, health and the quality of our food all around the world.

This paper finds that many of stocks in the northeast Atlantic are being fished sustainably today and that, given time, those populations should continue to recover. This is particularly positive news as there has long been widespread criticism that the European Union's Common Fisheries Policy is failing.

A study published in the journal Perspectives on Psychological Science reviews the Database on Raising Intelligence to find interventions that increased children’s intelligence. One such intervention involved supplementing infants with long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids, and the study concludes that this does indeed have a positive impact on children’s IQ. 

This interesting blog on the Planet Earth Online website reports on a study from the University of Salford which conducted blind tastings for a range of fish species.  Only 15% of British tasters were able to identify cod – even though this is apparently our favourite fish, and we are generally very reluctant to try anything else. 

We recently asked for more information on fishing and aquaculture and the following was passed along to us. These are now up in the Research Library.

The UK’s New Economics Foundation has written a report arguing that all fishing in Europe should cease for up to nine years to let stocks recover. 

The FAO has published its latest State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture report.  It finds that 2010, people consumed about 128 million tonnes of fish. In the last five decades, world fish food supply has outpaced global population growth, and today fish provides more than 4.3 billion people with about 15 percent of their intake of animal protein. Estimates for 2010 point to fish consumption reaching another new high of 18.6 kg per person.

This paper fish demand in 2050 will be met but only if fish resources are managed sustainably and the animal feeds industry reduces its reliance on wild fish.