Apparently, 17% of wild-caught fish ends up getting fed to livestock. That’s pretty astonishing, given the increasingly dire state of global fish stocks, and it underscores the way in which most modern agriculture is fundamentally unsustainable.
As long as it is dependent on outside inputs where the supply is growing scarcer, it won’t be a mechanism for feeding humanity indefinitely.
Much better to leave those fish in the sea or, failing that, at least feed them to people.
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Previously,
Overfishing and the EU
Monday, June 23rd, 2008
Almost nothing is sustainable
Tuesday, June 3rd, 2008
Delicious pike
Wednesday, May 21st, 2008
Here come the jellies
Monday, April 7th, 2008
Trouble with aquaculture
Thursday, April 3rd, 2008
New UNEP report: ‘In Dead Water’
Monday, February 25th, 2008
Fishing should never be subsidized
Wednesday, January 23rd, 2008
Earlier, you mentioned that a lot of unwanted ‘bycatch’ fish gets tossed dead back into the sea.
Perhaps fishers could be required to save those fish, for use in these kinds of animal feeding operations? Surely, that would be better than just dumping them in the ocean?
Fish and pigs and chickens, oh my!
Farm animals consume 17 percent of wild-caught fish
Here’s a guest post from Jennifer Jacquet of the Sea Around Us Project and the UBC Fisheries Centre in Vancouver, B.C.