Food Is All the Rage: Why Not Be Outrageous?

Some seafood is quite sustainably harvested. And adds to the local economy. Come down to Corpus Christi, and I'll introduce you to some shrimpers. They -- well, not the ones you meet, but their work heirs -- will be pulling shrimp from the gulf long after you and I are gone. Why should we want to eliminate that?

I have been considering giving up fish also. It seems that everything is: mercury-laden; unsustainable; polluting (fish farms); kills marine mammals, sea turtles, etc, at an unacceptable rate; or has an unacceptable by-catch.

If Ben Stein says wild-caught, Alaska salmon are safe and have none of the above problems, I believe him, but I can't get it here on the East Coast.

Tom
of the Sweetwater Sea

The solution isn't to stop eating fish. The solution is to develop sustainable fish farming.

I'm highly sympathetic to your argument but there are a couple things I'm still wondering about:

Why focus on a personal boycott, rather than on lobbying for reduced catches, more sustainable farming, and better labeling?
What about all the people outside the English-speaking world who depend on fish and fishing? How does a movement based around boycott take them into account?
Agricultural runoff does plenty to hurt the ocean- doesn't focusing on boycott tend to ignore other impacts like this?
Also, what about freshwater fish? Equally bad?

For the record I'm one of those "vegetarians" who eats fish maybe once a month. Usually freshwater. So I'm not opposed to the idea of a boycott-- essentially that's what I do with meat (and fish Monteray Bay tells me is unsustainable). But I don't think its as effective as lobbying for better practices.

Jennifer, I applaud your efforts. I think that giving up fish is a lot easier than giving up meat. The reason I ate seafood was that I thought the Omega3 fat was good for my health and brain function. You can get it through flax seeds and other plant based foods.

Fish contain unsaturated fatty acids, which, when substituted for saturated fatty acids such as those in meat, may lower your cholesterol. But the main beneficial nutrient appears to be omega-3 fatty acids in fatty fish. Omega-3 fatty acids are a type of unsaturated fatty acid that's thought to reduce inflammation throughout the body.

Omega-3 fatty acids are also believed to improve learning ability in children, decrease triglycerides, lower blood pressure, reduce blood clotting, enhance immune function and improve arthritis symptoms. Consuming one to two servings a week of fish, particularly fish that's rich in omega-3 fatty acids, appears to reduce the risk of heart disease, particularly sudden cardiac death.

http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/omega-3/HB00087

Thanks for mentioning my Animal PLanet blog post. I must admit my kids and my boyfriend and I had a serious giggle over the PETA Sea Kittens campaign. I am personally not against eating meat, if it's sustainable. I completely respect all vegans and vegetarians and have on occasion been one myself less for the animal rights aspect than the environmental aspect of food production. I love all the various perspectives out there, and enjoy a good discussion over it. There was a recent article I saw on Huffington Post about a study showing early hominids were not meat eaters but vegetarians that was quite interesting.

Thanks for mentioning my Animal PLanet blog post. I must admit my kids and my boyfriend and I had a serious giggle over the PETA Sea Kittens campaign. I am personally not against eating meat, if it's sustainable. I completely respect all vegans and vegetarians and have on occasion been one myself less for the animal rights aspect than the environmental aspect of food production. I love all the various perspectives out there, and enjoy a good discussion over it. There was a recent article I saw on Huffington Post about a study showing early hominids were not meat eaters but vegetarians that was quite interesting.

I'm far more concerned with starving humans in Asia and Africa, than I am with fish. The future of my species is more important to me.

We've got 7 billion hungry humans on this planet. It's modern agriculture and modern fishing and modern delivery systems that keeps them alive. That population would be unsustainable with the kind of 19th century small-scale agriculture and fishing you're imagining. You would be sentencing them to death by starvation.

Take your "Give up fish, give up meat, etc." to Africa or North Korea where they're reduced to eating tree bark, and see what kind of a response you get.

If you want to argue that the human population of Earth should be reduced, you might have an argument. But to worry about fish when human beings--real human beings--are starving in North Korea, Africa, etc., seems like a middle-class guilt trip for neurotic Westerners.

Not interested.
Deal with HUMAN starvation sometime.

sinz54,

I think Jennifer is talking more about the American diet and how we consume more seafood than is sustainable. If Asia and Africa are so dependent on seafood what are they going do when it's gone? In the US, seafood really is a luxury we could live without or at least consume less of. Our unsustainable levels of meat, fish and poultry intake needs to be addressed as soon as possible.

Jennifer - please name one single species of fish of shellfish that is now extinct because of human consumption.

sinz54 - I agree with your view to a point. I think we should only be consuming seafood caught or raised in the US because it is managed well under the Magnusen Stevenson Act. If we just stopped importing seafood from all over the world where there is limited to no management or regulations then it would solve most of the problem in terms of our own consumption of seafood. There are many well managed stocks of fish in the US and even some that were historically overfished and have rebounded after management actions. We need our own government to regulate the seafood industry better and to continue to manage our own fish stocks sustainably. If people do not have a connection to the oceans through what they eat, then they won't care about whats happening out there.

Sorry for posting 3 comments in a row, but I just love this blog... I just quickly wanted to use the example of the collapse of West coast salmon stocks. People who like to eat and fish for these salmon are the ones trying to save them. Agriculture and dams have destroyed the salmon stocks - NOT the recreational fishery for them. So maybe we shouldn't eat produce from California instead of not eating fish.

Dear Sinz54

It's this concept of viewing humans as separate from the rest of life that got us where we are today - the health of our species is intimately linked to the health of the planet. If we care about the 1 billion who have little other choice other than to eat fish, perhaps we could consider shifting to one many other choices of food we have.

Take a closer look at the work of Jennifer and her collegues at www.seaaroundus.org. Even better, watch the End of the Line movie. It's about not just about making fisheries sustainable it's also about making them FAIR.

Have a look at where all the European fisheries shifted to when their stocks ran out - West Africa, Pacific... Where do we get the fish to feed farmed salmon so we can have liberal lashings of smoked salmon? Places like Peru, where their children are suffering malnutrition. In poorer countries with fish resources, the people depend on fish for their food & livihoods but get little return from the sale of fishing rights to wealthy countries. They can only watch while industrial fleets suck up the last of their fish...