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How I Learned to Love Farmed Fish
- _delirium 16y agoThis makes sense to me. The problems with fish farming are mostly just problems with farming in general: animals in close quarters transmit disease more easily, farmers combating that with mass quantities of antibiotics risk causing other problems, poor waste management leads to a gross-at-best and toxic-at-worst environment of farmed animals sloshing about in their own waste, meat from animals fed on diets very different from their natural diets might not have the same nutrient profiles, etc., etc. But none of those are really fish-specific. Perhaps opponents realize that, and it's mostly a tactical move to keep what they see as an already bad industry (commercial meat farming) from expanding to a new ecosystem (coastal waters). Maybe that's even the best tactical move, given political realities. But I can't help but thinking that I'd rather have some attempt at a real solution. What that solution is I'm not as sure about. There are regulation angles, especially with things that have large potential for collateral damage, like overuse of antibiotics. There are encourage-the-free-market angles, like better labeling, or better third-party information sources, that make it easier for consumers to decide what kinds of farms they want to buy from. And possibly other angles. I suppose we could all become vegetarians, too, but that's unlikely.