Food Safety and Waste-to-Wealth Through Blue Economy

Food safety is used as a scientific method/discipline describing handling, preparation, and storage of food in ways that prevent foodborne illnesses. These illnesses can occur as a result of hazards, whether chronic or acute, that may make food injurious to the health of the consumer. Safe, easily accessible food promotes sustainable development, food and nutrition security, trade, and tourism in any nation. The three significant sources of food are crops, livestock, and seafood. Foods from the ocean, lakes, and rivers are referred to as blue foods/seafoods, and they are crucial for attaining food security, eradicating malnutrition, and creating robust, resilient, and healthy food systems. However, reports have shown that a third of all fish that are caught are usually unused because they are thrown out due to being low value and spoiled or storage problems. Others are discarded as leftovers and by-products. Numerous as-yet-unidentified bioactive compounds found in seafood have the potential to be novel elements in commercial functional meals and pharmaceuticals. Regrettably, 50–80% of the waste or discards produced by commercial processing setups are wasted or underutilized. Bioactive peptides, collagen and gelatin, oligosaccharides, fatty acids, enzymes, calcium, water-soluble minerals, vitamins, carotenoids, chitin, chitosan, and biopolymers are just a few of the unique and useful biomolecules found in these by-products. These seafood wastes could be used in food, cosmetics, medicines, the environment, biomedicine, and biofuel. Some challenges such as pollution, infrastructure, capacity building, as well as climate change militate against blue economy. There is also need for continuous rebuilding of the marine ecosystem to ensure sustainability of the blue economy. This study reported the prospects of blue economy in converting waste to wealth.