The value of seafood traded globally and the value of US seafood imports will continue to rise strongly year-on-year as consumers continue to move away from meat, the founder of a food consultancy said on a recent webinar.
Arlin Wasserman, founder and managing director of Changing Tastes, a consultancy that helps create ventures in the food and agriculture sectors, spoke bullishly on the US outlook on the second edition of the Latin American Summit for Sustainable Fisheries and Aquaculture on Oct. 29.
The US imported over $22 billion of fish and seafood in the last twelve months, representing about $1 out of every $8 purchase of fish and seafood globally, he said.
"This figure has tripled in the last 25 years and continues to grow even despite the COVID-19 pandemic. The forecast is that it will continue to do so steadily for many years to come," he said.
For the first time, seafood has become the most popular choice among US consumers to replace meat, according to data presented during the webinar.
"According to our surveys, consumers in the US want to eat far less beef by actively limiting the amount of meat eaten, a tendency that has been constant for more than two years," he said.
"For the first time, one out of five consumers who want to eat less meat would prefer to eat fish and seafood instead. Acting on that would tremendously increase the overall consumption of fish and seafood products in the US."
The future is diversification
According to Wasserman, consumers who are looking to eat more seafood also would prefer to buy different types than they do now.
"This is not about producing more of the same species to satisfy the US market need of fish and seafood but about increasing our portfolio with more variety and new flavors," he said.
"Shrimp has consistently been the most popular species offered in the US since more than a decade ago, followed by salmon, which became even more popular than tuna and crab. It is also the only product currently increasing its popularity among the top five species consumed in the country."
Conversely, both octopus and ahi tuna have increased in popularity much faster than any other species, as the chart above shows.
"Ranked 20th and 21st in 2009, their popularity has risen to rank 14th and 13th, respectively, among the 25 most consumed species in the US in 2020," he pointed out. "This means that many other species are now becoming more desirable to the US consumer, which also creates a great opportunity to introduce new species in the market."
Wasserman also pointed out that some specific value-added products are now more appealing for consumers in the US than they were a few years before since COVID-19 has changed the way we consume fish.
"Also importantly, we see that smoked, cured, and chilled products and preparations also bring new interesting flavors to the US consumers' tables and fit exactly with what and how they now want to eat fish and seafood," he said.
He added that the pandemic has changed the way the public eats fish.
"Thus, I believe that marketing these products based on a sense of place and flavors is the best way to break out the commodity trap and cut through COVID-19 challenges," he said.
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