GREEN NEWS & VIEWS
Fish Farms... ...continued from page 69
that it takes around three pounds of “feeder fish” to produce just one pound of captive salmon. Furthermore, a staggering 35 percent of what is produced by fisheries and aquaculture is wasted, never even reaching the market. Promises that a sustainable solution to the overfishing of our oceans can be found in aquaculture offer nothing but false hope while reeling in hundreds of billions of dollars in profit for an industry built on the exploitation of animals, people, and our shared planet. What We Need Is a Food System Sea Change As of the USDA’s most recent Census of Agriculture , from 2018, the U.S. was home to 2,932 aquaculture farms in an industry worth $1.5 billion in sales. Globally, fish farming is projected to surpass $409 billion in rev - enue by 2030, and between 1990 and 2018, aquaculture production rose by 527 percent . This is not a solution; it’s a problem. The good news is that the seafood alternatives industry is grow- ing, too. At least 120 companies are producing alt-seafood around the world, according to the Good Food Institute, and the sector raised 92 percent more funding in 2021 compared to the previous year. In other encouraging news, concerned chefs recently pledged to stop serving farmed salmon due to the industry’s impacts on the envi - ronment and animal welfare. If we want to do better by the oceans and the many species that call it home, the most effective answer is to shift towards a more plant- based food system kinder to animals, people, and the planet. Farm Sanctuary was founded in 1986 to combat the abuses of fac - tory farming, advocate for institutional reforms, and encourage a new awareness and understanding of farm animals and the benefits of plant-based living. It fights the disastrous effects of animal agri - culture on animals, the environment, social justice, and public health through rescue, education, and advocacy. www.farmsanctuary.org This story, submitted by Farm Sanctuary, originally appeared on their website in November 2023 and is reprinted here with the orga - nization’s permission.
populations can be sickened, impacting biodiversity. In one recent example, thousands of salmon from an Icelandic farm escaped, and The Guardian warned “the impact could be deadly,” even reducing the ability of wild populations to reproduce and survive if the farmed and wild fish were to breed. This is not where the environmental damage stops. Extraction of groundwater for aquaculture has been found in one study to acceler- ate sea level rise by causing land to sink. 5. Fish Farming Exploits Marginalized Communities In fish farming, many workers may be undocumented immigrants working long hours for low wages and left with little way to report concerns or injuries. Workers’ rights violations have been found on fish farms, as elsewhere in factory farming. The industry relies on other exploitation and inequities, too. One of the most commonly farmed species of fish is the Atlantic salmon. In fact, all Atlantic salmon sold in the U.S. , and most around the world, comes from fish raised on farms. A 2022 study revealed that millions of tons of small fish caught in the global south – including West Afri - can countries “facing high levels of food insecurity” – go to feed farmed salmon sold to consumers in North America, Europe, and Asia. Pigs on factory farms are often cannibalized, forced to eat meat from fellow pigs. Sadly, the same reality exists for farmed fish, and the salmon industry is a major consumer of wild-caught fish. According to the 2022 research, 60 percent and 23 percent of the fish oil and fish - meal used in aquaculture feed, respectively, goes to feed farm-raised salmon. In 2019, NPR reported on this “fish-eat-fish chain ,” noting
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