Integration of sustainability assessment and quantitative risk assessment of aquaculture in Singapore

Abstract

With large seafood consumption by locals and limited land resources, Singapore needs to emphasize the assessment of both the sustainability and safety of our aquaculture production. The common tool to assess food safety is ARRA, while the other common tool to assess sustainability is LCA. The main objectives of this thesis are; 1) to develop the ARRA methodology for Singapore’s aquaculture production; 2) to elucidate the epidemiology of AMR Vibrio parahaemolyticus in aquaculture; 3) to elaborate a set of LCA impact assessment indicators for human health area of protection in local aquaculture; and 4) to apply the state-of-the-art methodology for integration of ARRA and LCA through an integration framework to assess and compare the sustainability and food safety of different categories of Singapore’s aquaculture production, which is a novel approach for optimizing the local aquaculture systems for sustainable and food safety development. ARRA for Vibrio parahaemolyticus carrying resistances to AMP, PENG and TET are conducted in two production system types (MFLT and MOLT) in accordance to FAO regional guidelines volume 3 and Codex AI guidelines for risk analysis of foodborne AMR pathogens, while LCA is conducted in accordance to ISO 14040 and ISO 14044. Through the ARRA-complemented LCA integrated framework, it is shown that PR has a non-negligible influence on overall impacts on human health, with PR contributing 95.8 – 98.3% of total impacts for MOLT and 3.71% – 5.79% of total impacts for MFLT. PR estimates are higher in the MOLT system compared to the MFLT system when ARRA scenarios are kept constant, ranging from 7.5 – 32.5 fold higher. In conventional LCA, the exclusion of PR showed that MOLT performed better than MFLT with lower overall human health impacts. With the inclusion of PR in the integrated framework, the findings are changed with MFLT performing better than MOLT in certain scenarios. The use of the integrated framework hence revealed trade-offs relationships which would have otherwise been missed when performing both assessments as standalone. As such, the ARRA-complemented LCA approach can be used as a tool to provide a more holistic and informed decision support for policy-makers.