- Hook, Line & PCBs (May/June 1997)
- Sharks in Danger? (May/June 1997)
- Is fish farming the solution? by Mike Johnston (May/June 1997)
- Whales don't eat farmed salmon - Should we? by Alexandra Morton, Natural Life Magazine (March/April 1998)
- Fisheries
- Salmon Aquaculture
- Criminal charges brought against salmon farm for polluting fish habitat. (News release March 8, 1999)
- Health minister urged to assess risks of eating farmed salmon (News release Jan 8, 2001)
- Science Matters Archive.
- Fish stocks face stormy times (Jul 12, 2000)
- Scouring our oceans bare (Jul 28, 1999)
- A selection of articles on food fish from New Internationalist.
- A guide to food-fish
- Action campaigns for fair fishing (regional)
- Alternatives for fishfarming, culinary fashion and destructive fishing practices
For many vegetarians, fish is the last meat
they give up. We hear about the health hazards of land meats, we
hear about the environmental consequences of land-based factory farms and
we increasingly hear concerns about animal rights and consciousness.
But how often do we hear about the the health hazard of fish and seafood,
the damaging ecological consequences of fish farming, the environmental
impact of trawler fishing and the fundamental rights of fishes?
Fish are not immune
to the high levels of pollutants which are being dumped into our streams,
rivers, lakes and oceans. Chemicals gather in their fat and bioaccumulate
as the fish age. As larger fish eat the smaller fish, the chemicals
are absorbed into the flesh of the predator and the problem moves up the
food chain. PCBs have been found in 43% of all salmon,
50% of white fish and 35% of deep sea fish, according to the February 1992
issue of Consumer Reports. (1) In fact, the
study concludes that the biggest source of PCBs in the human diet is fish.
(1) Once PCBs are ingested, they're with you for
life. PCBs and other fat-soluble chemicals are not metabolised and
excreted, rather they bioaccumulate in the body's fatty tissues.
PCBs were banned from use in Canada in 1976 due to their carcinogenic
(cancer-causing) properties.
Heavy metals dumped into our water systems by big industry include lead, cadmium and arsenic. These toxic metals also accumulate in fish and and other sea creatures, and then make it to the dinner tables. 90% of fish contain some amount of mercury making fish the main source of dietary mercury. A typical can of tuna contains 15 micrograms or mercury. (1)
Seafood is one of the largest sources of food-borne illness. Consumer Reports found that 40% of fish begins to spoil before it leaves the supermarket, (1) and a 1992 FDA study found that 20% of seafood in american processing facilities showed signs of microbiological contamination, decomposition and filth. (2) Your risks of getting food poisoning from raw seafood is 1 in 250. You chance of getting sick from seafood is 25 times greater than for beef and 26 times greater than for pork or poultry. (2)
And what about the environmental consequences? Current levels of fish harvest are straining marine ecosystems. Of the top 200 marine fish resources, 35% are in decline and 25% are fully exploited. (3) In Canada we are not immune. In 1992, the Canadian government took an unprecedented step by declaring a moratorium on commercial cod fishing in Atlantic Canada. Traditional in-shore fishing in this region had relied on the "rhythm of nature", permitting fishermen to fish within the means of what the ocean was able to provide. But with the industrialization of fishing and the development of large fleets of off-shore fishing trawlers, technology not nature began to control how much fish was fished. Dragging became the fishing method of choice, and with it a decline in the quality of fish and the available fish stocks. As fish stocks declined, technology increased, making it easier and easier to find the scarcer and scarcer fish, and masking the declining fish stocks. (4)
As well as depleting the oceans of fish, industrialized fishing has turned parts of the ocean floor into "marine deserts". In a practice likened to clear-cut logging and strip-mining of the earth, huge unselective nets drag along the ocean floor, scooping up everything in their paths. The destruction of the ocean floor upsets the delicate marine ecosystem by lowering biodiversity, leaving nowhere for fish to spawn, nowhere for smaller fish to feed, and modifying predator-prey relationships.
Although efficient, industrialised fishing
is wasteful. Between 16 million and 27 million tonnes (over 20%)
of all fish caught are considered bycatch and thrown back dead or injured.
(2, 5) And for every kilogram of
shrimp caught by dragging the ocean floors, another 10 non-targetted marine
animals are also caught and discarded, (5) including over
150 000 sea turtles every year. (6)
And fish farming (aquaculture), currently touted as the solution to our over-fishing problem? Not any better than land-based factory farming and possibly more environmentally damaging. Fish are farmed in overcrowded floating marine feedlots that produce abnormally high levels of waste for their small areas. Wastes produced by these marine feedlots upset the natural ecosystems, destroying the ocean beds beneath the fish and polluting nearby shores. (4) Aquaculture has been partially blamed for he degradation of water quality in BC's Georgian Straits. (2) Overcrowding also means disease and parasites. Farmed fish are routinely fed antibiotics and washed with pesticides. Red dye is even fed to farmed salmon to give their flesh the pink colour found in wild salmon (farmed salmon flesh is grey due to its inferiour feed). (4) These chemicals are released out into the surrounding ecosystems as fish feces or simply washed out of the feedlots, and are believe to contribute to antibiotic resistant disease among the wild fish and their predators. There is also evidence that the antibiotics fed to fish may contribute to antibiotic resistant diseases in humans. (4)
If people are concerned about the impact of genetically modified food on their food supply, they should be equally as concerned about the ecological consequences of fish farming. Diseases bred on fish farms can travel into the wild population, further devastating natural fish stocks. And fish sometimes burst open their cages, invading traditional spawning grounds, competing for food and weakening the gene pool by breeding with wild fish. Escaped genetically-modified fish introduce altered genetics into the wild-type population. (4,6)
Environmental concerns aside, animal rights activists believe fish entitled to humane treatment. While fish lack the ability to vocalize pain, studies have shown that that they have developed sensory and nervous systems capable of feeling pain. Fish hauled out of deep water go through painful and often fatal decompression, not unlike deep-sea-divers resurfacing too quickly from ocean depths. Fish not killed by decompression, suffer needlessly as they slowly die from asphyxiation, become crushed beneath the weight of other fish, or freeze to death on beds of ice as crews sort through their catch with spiked rods. (2) With any other type of animal we would be outraged.
Finally, high in protein, with no carbohydrate or fiber, fish as a nutrient is not much different than other animal sources. Although it is generally lower in saturated fat and, in the case of cold-water, fatty fish, is a good source of omega-3 fats. All the nutrient benefits of fish can be found in other food sources, including plant-based diets.
1. Consumer Reports. February 1992.2. Toronto Vegetarian Association. Fish. Sept. 1995.
3. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. The state of the world fisheries and aquaculture 1996 summary. http://www.fao.org/waicent/faoinfo/fishery/publ/sofia/sofflye.htm
4. Roberts, W, MacRae R, Stahlbrand L. Real Food for a Change. Random House of Canada. 1999.
5. Westeel D. Fish wasted on massive scale. Globe & Mail. March 17, 1995, A8.
6. New Internationalist. Issue number 325. July 2000.
Other
Links:
E-magazine. How
'Factory Fishing' Decimated Newfoundland Cod (Mar-Apr 2001)
Lifelines
(The newsletter of the Toronto Vegetarian
Association):
New Internationalist
Magazine:
The International
Vegetarian Union:
Earthsave International. Fish - What's the catch?
Fisheries Department. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.
The Welfare of Farmed Fish. (PDF file) by Philip Lymbery. Compassion in World Farming Trust. (1992) A detailed look at the methods, welfare issues and environmental impact of the rapidly growing industry of fish farming.
Resources
and articles not on-line:
Ackefors, H. and Enell, M. 1992. Pollution
loads derived from aquaculture:
land-based and water-based systems.
In: Workshop on Fish Farm Effluents and their Control in EC Countries.
Published by the Department of Fishery Biology, Institute for Marine Science
at the Christian-Albrechts-University of Kiel, Germany, pp. 3-4.
Carl Safina. The World's Imperiled Fish. Scientific American, Nov 1995.
Peter Weber. Oceans in Peril. E Magazine, May/June 1994.
Michael Parfit. Diminishing Returns. National Geographic, Nov 1995, p37.
Gurney Williams III. What's Wrong With Fish? Vegetarian Times, Aug 1995.
Trout Unlimited. The Invisible Menace: Agricultural Pollution Run-off in Our Nation's Streams. Feb 1994.
Jim Mason. Fowling the Waters. E Magazine, Sept/Oct 1995, p33.
Peter Weber. "Oceans in Peril," E Magazine,
May/June 1994.
email AmandasKitchen@yahoo.ca
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