Some
Things Fishy
When I was in grade school,
in the mid-60s, I recall vividly a short
film I watched in class
one day, portraying fishing ships full
of grinning, brawny lads hauling
away at nets filled with their quivering
piscene bounty. In the background the narrator
warbled pridefully about how
the
oceans
were "an
inexhaustible
supply of fish".
New research, however, indicates that by
2050 the
oceans will contain more plastic than fish.
(1) That's a lot of plastic we're dumping
into the oceans.
(2) That's a lot of fish yet to grind into
animal food.
Setting aside for the moment the mountains
of garbage we toss into the ocean stocks
of wild fish are declining at a possibly
irretrievable rate due to over-fishing
and the careless and wasteful way we do
it. Industrial fisheries generally only
keep the good stuff and kick the remaining,
often
damaged
and
dying, creatures back into the ocean. Though
some is kept to feed our dogs and cats,
while some
is
used to fatten cattle. Yes, cattle.
"So what?" you say, "We have plenty of
sustainable farmed fish, right?"
Well, yeah, but farmed salmon has to be
fed wild fish in order to stay healthy.
They can't live on just cornmeal. And guess
where
all that
wild
fish comes
from? Uh-huh.
Tilapia? Don't get me started on that bottom-feeding
trash fish. They'll happily subsist on
the poop that comes out of the farmed salmon.
Seriously. Bon appetit.
"But if we stop catching fish, where'll
I get my omega-3 pills?"
One, fish
oil pills are a scam. Two, humans
are subject to the "herd instinct" and
would happily chow down on baby panda hearts
if someone claimed they'd cure diabetes.
(See: rhino horn) Three, man did not evolve
on a steady diet of fucking salmon. Primitive
man no doubt ate fish but it certainly
wasn't a mainstay of the diet.
I love sounding strident here but you don't
need meat or fish in your diet, you just
need a healthy variety of vegetables. You're
not a carnivore, never were, never will
be.
But, hey, guess what? Someone's planning
to
manufacture
real
honest-to-goodness
meat
from culture. Meaning no antibiotics,
no fecal matter, no corn subsidies, no
cow farts,
and no murder of millions of innocent,
sentient creatures every day.
But, you know, blah-blah-fucking-blah.
I'm just one guy with an opinion. But a
guiltless conscience.
=Lefty=
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