Australia’s dietary guidelines and the environmental impact of food “from paddock to plate”

To the Editor: We agree that nutritious food choices should also be sustainable, but Selvey and Carey’s portrayal of seafood production1 is incorrect. The 2012 assessment of Australia’s fisheries found that only two of the 111 fish stocks classified (1.8%) were overfished, rather than the 40% claimed by Selvey and Carey, and one of these (bluefin tuna) is rebuilding rapidly.2 Assuming 15 million Australians eat two 100 g portions of seafood every week, our annual seafood requirements are 156 000 tonnes from the 241 100 tonnes of current sustainable fishing and aquaculture production.