Fish Flesh Is Not the Answer

Clearly, it is grossly inefficient to feed our crops to animals so that we can eat meat. But many people may be led to believe that replacing land animals with farmed fish is an effective way to fight world hunger. Unfortunately, fish farming is just as bad for the world's hungry as other forms of animal agriculture.

Commercial fishers are emptying our oceans at an alarming rate. According to the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization, 11 of the world's 15 major oceanic fishing areas are in serious decline.²³ The world's population is increasing at a rate of 250,000 people per day, but the number of fish we can expect to be able to take from the oceans will not grow.²⁴

Commercial fishers from wealthy countries, like the United States and Japan, buy the fishing rights for the oceans around poor countries in places like Africa and South America. After they have plundered these fisheries, the commercial fishers move on, leaving devastated ecosystems and starving native populations in their wake. A recent article in The Guardian explained, "We can eat fish, but only if we are prepared to contribute to the collapse of marine ecosystems and—as the European fleet plunders the seas off West Africa—the starvation of some of the hungriest people on Earth. It's impossible to avoid the conclusion that the only sustainable and socially just option is for the inhabitants of the rich world to become, like most of the Earth's people, broadly vegan."²⁵

One proposed "solution" to the depletion of wild fish populations is increased fish farming. However, fish farming, like all forms of animal agriculture, uses up much more food than it could ever produce. For a fish or shrimp to produce a single pound of flesh, he or she must be fed as much as 5 pounds of food.²⁶ Farmed fish are often fed other fish who are taken from the ocean, making fish farming an even greater strain on the ocean than commercial fishing!

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²³ Robbins, The Food Revolution, p. 294.
²⁴ HM Johnson and Associates, Seafood Information and Analysis for Decision-Makers, "Annual Report on the United States Seafood Industry," 12th ed., 2004, p. 1.
²⁵ Monbiot.
²⁶ Robbins, The Food Revolution, p. 298.