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"Nature didn't intend for salmon to be crammed into pens and fed soy, poultry litter, and hydrolyzed chicken feathers. As a result..." We're going to have to s

"Nature didn't intend for salmon to be crammed into pens and fed soy, poultry litter, and hydrolyzed chicken feathers. As a result..." We're going to have to start farming just about all fish soon. I find a lot of the source article here vague and unscientific. Nature doesn't intend anything.

dschobel 17y ago
I believe the intended meaning was environments which are not naturally occurring rather than attributing volition to nature.
rarrrrrr 17y ago
Do you not taste the difference between, say, wild Alaskan or Colorado River salmon vs. fish farm stock? Farmed fish can be improved just by using higher quality feed.
- dylanz 17y ago
  Indeed. I just moved from NZ, which is big on salmon farming, to Seattle. The taste of farmed salmon, in my opinion, is repulsive compared to wild salmon. I can only hope we don't have to farm all fish in the future, as I don't think improving the feed can completely fill that taste gap.
- mnemonicsloth 17y ago
  Have you ever eaten wild Alaskan or Colorado River salmon and fish farm stock at the same time, without knowing which was which? Were they prepared in the same way? By the same chef? Yes, there probably are differences that you could detect in a blind taste-test. But given the positive affect associated with the names -- "Colorado River Rock Star Javascript-Guru Salmon" -- I wouldn't be surprised if most of the difference in flavor is printed on the menu.
  - warfangle 17y ago
    No, but if it's anything like the difference in free-range chicken and factory-farmed chicken, you would have to be blindfolded and your mouth scoured to not be able to tell the difference (free-range chicken not only looks different - it's leaner, the fat is marbled into the meat and not in thick sheathes around it, it's a yellowish color instead of sickly translucent pink, it tastes different, and its texture is different).
karzeem 17y ago
I agree that nature doesn't intend anything, but when people say that it does, what they're actually doing is slightly clumsily expressing a very valid concern. And that concern is that a lot of agricultural science suffers from a dangerous sort of reductionism. We come up with a model for how something grows, and then we assume that anything the model doesn't account for isn't important. (This is actually a general gripe I have about a lot of biological science.) The fact is that plants and animals evolved to give and take as part of enormously complex systems we've hardly begun to understand. I think it's reasonable not to assume that we can scrap those systems, rebuild them from the top down based on what understanding we do have, and not encounter unforeseen consequences.

dschobel 17y ago

I believe the intended meaning was environments which are not naturally occurring rather than attributing volition to nature.

rarrrrrr 17y ago

Do you not taste the difference between, say, wild Alaskan or Colorado River salmon vs. fish farm stock? Farmed fish can be improved just by using higher quality feed.

dylanz 17y ago
Indeed. I just moved from NZ, which is big on salmon farming, to Seattle. The taste of farmed salmon, in my opinion, is repulsive compared to wild salmon. I can only hope we don't have to farm all fish in the future, as I don't think improving the feed can completely fill that taste gap.
mnemonicsloth 17y ago
Have you ever eaten wild Alaskan or Colorado River salmon and fish farm stock at the same time, without knowing which was which? Were they prepared in the same way? By the same chef? Yes, there probably are differences that you could detect in a blind taste-test. But given the positive affect associated with the names -- "Colorado River Rock Star Javascript-Guru Salmon" -- I wouldn't be surprised if most of the difference in flavor is printed on the menu.
- warfangle 17y ago
  No, but if it's anything like the difference in free-range chicken and factory-farmed chicken, you would have to be blindfolded and your mouth scoured to not be able to tell the difference (free-range chicken not only looks different - it's leaner, the fat is marbled into the meat and not in thick sheathes around it, it's a yellowish color instead of sickly translucent pink, it tastes different, and its texture is different).

karzeem 17y ago

I agree that nature doesn't intend anything, but when people say that it does, what they're actually doing is slightly clumsily expressing a very valid concern. And that concern is that a lot of agricultural science suffers from a dangerous sort of reductionism. We come up with a model for how something grows, and then we assume that anything the model doesn't account for isn't important. (This is actually a general gripe I have about a lot of biological science.) The fact is that plants and animals evolved to give and take as part of enormously complex systems we've hardly begun to understand. I think it's reasonable not to assume that we can scrap those systems, rebuild them from the top down based on what understanding we do have, and not encounter unforeseen consequences.