How much fish do we eat? By the numbers

The Joint Research Centre of the European Commission says global seafood consumption has more than doubled in the past 50 years, putting stress on the sustainability of fishing.

Some numbers from the first global seafood consumption footprint published by The Joint Research Centre of the European Commission published this week;

50 – Global seafood consumption has more than doubled in the past 50 years, putting stress on the sustainability of fishing

27 – Taking into consideration both food that humans consume and seafood processed for feed production, seafood consumption in EU member states equals 27 kg per head.

61.5 – The highest consumption at EU level is observed in Portugal (61.5 kg per head) while outside the EU, the top consumers are Korea (78.5 kg per head) followed by Norway (66.6 kg per head).

22.3 – The global per head consumption is estimated at 22.3 kg.

154,000,000 – According to calculations using baseline data from 2011, global demand for seafood destined for human consumption is 143.8 million tonnes per year, and the overall consumption footprint, which also includes other uses of seafood, is 154 million tonnes.

65,000,000 – China has by far the largest seafood consumption footprint (65 million tonnes), followed by the European Union (13 million tonnes), Japan (7.4 million tonnes), Indonesia (7.3 tonnes) and the United States (7.1 million tonnes).

78.5 – In terms of consumption footprint per capita, the Republic of Korea scored highest (78.5 kg per capita), followed by Norway (66.6 kg), Portugal (61.5 kg), Myanmar (59.9 kg), Malaysia (58.6 kg) and Japan (58 kg) – China comes in seventh at 48.3 kg per capita.

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