At present, our primary focus is on researching, tracking, and containing the expansion of intensive carnivorous aquaculture - an industry that poses significant environmental, social, economic, and food system risks. In collaboration with our grant, research, communications, and policy partners, we work to raise awareness and build broader understanding of aquaculture overall, with particular attention to its impacts.
Intensive aquaculture, including the cultivation of sea bream, sea bass, salmon, and shrimp, contributes to devastating environmental damage in the world’s seas and coastlines. In addition, the very nature of its business model includes the dangerously unsustainable grabbing of a disproportionate share of wild fish to create fish feed - which is then used in the cultivation of farmed fish consumed largely in the global north. It is an industry aided by marketing campaigns that position it as a solution to world hunger - claims that are at odds with scientific evidence.
Through our own research, the work of others, and coalitions that bring together universities, NGOs, scientists, philanthropic organizations, and local communities, we are committed to advancing more equitable marine food systems that conserve and sustainably use and protect the world's seas and coastlines.
Since 2023, the Rauch Foundation has invested significantly in research on aquaculture in Greece because the country sits on the frontlines of the global expansion of industrial carnivorous aquaculture. In 2011, the Greek government adopted a national plan establishing 25 Organized Aquaculture Development Areas ("the POAY”), a framework that would expand aquaculture production up to 24-fold and effectively turn large sections of the Greek coastline over to private companies.
The Foundation's work in Greece began through longstanding family ties to the island of Poros and a research partnership with Katheti AMKE, a nonprofit co-founded by Foundation president Eva Douzinas. Together, the Foundation and Katheti have worked to raise awareness of the POAY's environmental, social, and economic implications among affected communities and the broader Greek public. It is our hope that the research and conclusions drawn from that work will help to inform other regions around the world confronting similar threats to their economic and environmental sustainability.
