U.S. study finds aquaculture buried in red tape as calls mount in Canada for regulatory reform

New research says aquaculture faces more federal regulation than any other American food sector, as Canada’s seafood farmers press Ottawa to cut overlap, clarify oversight and create a clearer path to growth.

By Fabian Dawson
SeaWestNews

A new U.S. study says aquaculture is buried under more red tape than any other American food sector, even as Canada’s seafood farmers warn their own fragmented regulatory system is slowing investment, expansion and domestic food production.

The study, by researchers who examined five decades of U.S. federal regulatory data across 44 food industries, found aquaculture has faced more direct federal regulations than crop farming, fishing, hunting or terrestrial livestock farming since at least 1970.

By 1991, every aquaculture industry tracked in the study had overtaken all other food industries in the number of federal rules directly applying to it.

By 2020, the gap had widened dramatically, according to researchers from the University of Colorado Boulder, UC Santa Barbara, the University of Oxford and the University of Wyoming.

They found aquaculture was subject to 72.4 times more direct regulations than fishing, 2.9 times more than crop farming and 7.8 times more than terrestrial animal farming. The researchers say that matters because many aquaculture products have environmental impacts comparable to, or lower than, foods facing far lighter regulatory burdens.

Aquaculture is not just more tightly regulated. It is also caught in a wider web of agencies and government rules than any other food sector in the study. More than 75 per cent of those regulations flowed from six separate sections of the U.S. federal code, spanning agriculture, animals and animal products, food and drugs, navigation and navigable waters, environmental protection, and fish and wildlife.

Just as striking, the researchers found lower-impact sectors such as aquaculture are often regulated as much as or more than higher-impact industries like beef and lamb.

In other words, the rulebook does not track cleanly with environmental footprint. The study suggests that mismatch may be putting lower-impact food production, especially aquaculture, at a market disadvantage.

The authors acknowledge that regulation counts are only a proxy, not a perfect measure of burden. Still, they say the disparity is too large to ignore. Their case is for smarter regulation, not softer regulation, less overlap, better coordination, and clearer permitting rules tied to actual risk and real-world aquaculture production systems.

The study lands as Washington is still debating whether to create a more coherent framework for ocean aquaculture under the bipartisan Marine Aquaculture Research for America Act of 2025.

For Canada’s aquaculture sector, which generates more than $6 billion in economic activity, contributes about $2.3 billion to GDP and supports more than 18,000 jobs, the U.S. findings reinforce concerns long raised in Canada.

The Canadian Aquaculture Industry Alliance (CAIA) says the sector has languished without a federal department with a clear mandate to support growth and has pressed for aquaculture to be treated as agriculture and more fully integrated into Canada’s agri-food framework.

According to Fisheries and Oceans Canada, aquaculture in Canada does not operate under one national model but under three principal regulatory regimes: one for British Columbia, one for Prince Edward Island and another for all other provinces and territories. The same federal framework says every aquaculture site in Canada requires a valid lease and current licence before fish can be put into the water.

A SeaWestNews analysis of that framework shows the Canadian system as a layered structure involving DFO at the centre, five other named federal partners on DFO’s current aquaculture page, and 11 provincial or territorial authorities listed there. They include DFO, Environment and Climate Change Canada, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, Health Canada, the Pest Management Regulatory Agency and Transport Canada, layered over provincial and territorial authorities that control key parts of site approval and farm operations.

In practical terms, that means one aquaculture farm can face multiple permissions and multiple regulators depending on province, species, production method and whether issues such as fish health, therapeutants, feed, navigation, shipping or environmental effects are triggered.

CAIA says Canada’s aquaculture industry is being held back by a fragmented and cumbersome regulatory system.

“The answer in part is for the government to identify a separate lead economic-oriented development department that can work to identify growth targets, remove unnecessary red tape to that growth, and partner towards realizing the natural potential for Canada in aquaculture development,” said Timothy Kennedy, President & CEO of CAIA.

CAIA, he said, is pressing for aquaculture to be housed within the federal agriculture department, stressing it should be treated first and foremost as a food-producing farming sector rather than regulated mainly through a fisheries management lens.

The sector also supports broader Canadian agriculture, with significant demand for feed inputs such as grains and oilseeds which strengthen connections across the agri-food value chain, said Kennedy.

“Aquaculture is agriculture,” Kennedy added. “Recognizing that in policy is a simple step that can unlock significant economic and food system benefits for Canada.”

(Main aquaculture image courtesy of Stronger America Through Seafood)