Aquaculture is subject to more regulations than any other food sector in the United States

The United States (U.S.) food system is governed by an extensive set of regulations that determines, in part, which foods reach consumers and how. Regulations play an important role in protecting public interests, such as environmental well-being, but their complexity and number are criticized for delaying innovation and increasing business costs. We explored how the regulatory landscape varies across U.S. food industries and compares to industries’ associated environmental impacts. We analyzed five decades of federal regulatory data from the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) for 44 food industries across five food production sectors. We found that the total number of food system regulations has increased over time, with large disparities across individual food sectors. Since at least 1970, the aquaculture sector was annually subject to a greater number of direct regulations than any other food sector, on average. Aquaculture regulation originates from a larger number of CFR titles and federal agencies, and aquaculture is often subject to more regulations within each title and agency, than other food sectors. Our analysis identified several cases where food industries with smaller environmental impacts (e.g., greenhouse gas emissions, water use, land use)—including industries in the aquaculture sector—were subject to as many or more total regulations as food industries with larger environmental impacts. This pattern also persisted when comparing impacts only to the number of environmental regulations. While the number of regulations is only a proxy measure of regulatory burden, our results suggest that the U.S. federal regulatory landscape might disadvantage some lower-environmental-impact food industries and their products in the U.S. marketplace, especially aquaculture.