Aquaculture in the United States is subject to significantly more federal regulations than other food production sectors, according to a new academic study analysing five decades of regulatory data.
Researchers from institutions including the University of Colorado Boulder, the University of California Santa Barbara, the University of Helsinki, and the University of Oxford found that aquaculture faces nearly eight times as many federal regulations as terrestrial livestock farming and around three times as many as crop farming.
The analysis examined regulatory data from the Code of Federal Regulations between 1970 and 2020, covering 44 food industries across five sectors including aquaculture, crop farming, fishing, hunting and trapping, and terrestrial livestock farming.
The study found that aquaculture has consistently faced the highest number of direct federal regulations annually since at least 1970. The sector is regulated across a larger number of government agencies and regulatory areas than other food industries, including oversight from bodies such as the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Environmental Protection Agency.
Researchers also compared the number of regulations affecting each sector with environmental indicators including greenhouse gas emissions, land use and water use per kilogram of food produced. In several cases, industries with relatively lower environmental impacts, including aquaculture, were subject to as many or more regulations than sectors with higher environmental impacts such as beef and lamb production.
According to the authors, this suggests the current regulatory landscape may place a disproportionate burden on some lower-impact food sectors and could disadvantage aquaculture in the US marketplace.
The researchers suggested several factors behind the disparity, including the fact that aquaculture did not initially fit into existing agricultural regulatory frameworks. They also noted that more federal agencies have authority over aquaculture compared with other food sectors, with limited coordination between them.
While the number of regulations does not necessarily reflect the full regulatory burden on an industry, the study said the findings raise questions about whether current policies align with efforts to promote lower-impact food production.
The authors said federal regulators could address the issue either by standardising the relative regulatory burden across food sectors or by clarifying the policy objectives that justify the current framework.
