Posted on 10/30/2008 6:25:29 AM PDT by cogitator
An alarming new study to be published in November in the Annual Review of Environment and Resources finds that one-third of the world's marine fish catches are ground up and fed to farm-raised fish, pigs, and poultry, squandering a precious food resource for humans and disregarding the serious overfishing crisis in our oceans.
Lead author Dr. Jacqueline Alder, senior author Dr. Daniel Pauly, and colleagues urge that other foods be used to feed farmed animals so that these "forage fish" can be brought to market for larger-scale human consumption.
"Forage fish" include anchovies, sardines, menhaden, and other small- to medium-sized fish species which are the primary food for ocean-dwelling marine mammals, seabirds (especially puffins and gulls) and several large fishes.
Currently, catches of forage fish are predominantly used in animal feed, but these species are highly nutritious and well-suited for direct human consumption.
"We need to stop using so many small ocean fish to feed farmed fish and other animals," Alder said. "These small, tasty fish could instead feed people. Society should demand that we stop wasting these fish on farmed fish, pigs, and poultry."
Although feeds derived from soy and other land-based crops are available and are used, fishmeal and fish oil have skyrocketed in popularity because forage fish are easy to catch in large numbers, and hence, relatively inexpensive.
Entitled "Forage Fish: From Ecosystems to Markets," the study is a product of the nine-year Sea Around Us Project, a partnership between the University of British Columbia in Vancouver and The Pew Charitable Trusts. The study has been primarily funded by the Pew Institute for Ocean Science, which is now transitioning to become the Institute for Ocean Conservation Science at Stony Brook University.
"It defies reason to drain the ocean of small, wild fishes that could be directly consumed by people in order to produce a lesser quantity of farmed fish," said Dr. Ellen K. Pikitch, executive director of the Institute for Ocean Conservation Science and a Professor at Stony Brook University's School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences. "Skyrocketing pressure on small wild fishes may be putting entire marine food webs at great risk."
Forage fish account for a staggering 37 percent (31.5 million tonnes) of all fish taken from the world's oceans each year, and 90 percent of that catch is processed into fishmeal and fish oil. In 2002, 46 percent of fishmeal and fish oil was used as feed for aquaculture (fish-farming), 24 percent for pig feed, and 22 percent for poultry feed.
Pigs and poultry around the world consume more than double the seafood eaten by Japanese consumers and six times the amount consumed by the U.S. market.
Despite this large-scale extraction, few management plans have been created to guide the sustainable removal of these fish, and little is known about the role of forage fish in the marine ecosystem and how fishing impacts them. The most intensive commercial use of these fish is for farmed-animal feed, but there is also a growing demand for human fish oil supplements.
In some areas of the world, especially developing countries, almost all of the small fish used as farm feed are, or once were, eaten by people. These include the Peruvian and European anchovy, capelin, Japanese pilchard, round sardinella, and European anchovy.
"The use of forage fish for animal husbandry competes directly with human consumption in some areas of the world," the authors write. Excessive removal of forage fish could also hurt populations of seabirds and marine mammals that rely upon them as food.
"We must find a better way to manage forage fisheries before we cause irreversible damage to the broader ocean environment which depends on them as a food source," said Joshua Reichert, managing director of the Pew Environment Group.
"Human beings are not the only, or necessarily, the most important consumer of these fish. Whatever people take out of the sea needs to be carefully calibrated to ensure that sufficient fish are left to sustain populations of other fish, seabirds and marine mammals which all play a major role in the healthy functioning of the world's oceans."
This fall the Institute for Ocean Conservation Science at Stony Brook University will launch the Lenfest Forage Fish Task Force, a team of preeminent scientists and policy experts from around the world that will address this escalating environmental dilemma. The Task Force will be chaired by Dr. Pikitch and funded by the Lenfest Ocean Program.
Task force members will by 2010 develop scientific approaches to sustainably manage forage fisheries using "ecosystem-based fisheries management," which emphasizes the interconnectedness of species and habitats and breaks from traditional species-by-species management.
As long as they don’t start feeding them ham. This is how crises start. Next thing you know we’ll be hearing about “Mad Pig’s Disease”.
Anchovies have been used in making feed pellets for trout rearing farms for decades. Left over fish market fish have been used for chicken feed or fertilizer for centuries.
Seems like the same end result, if the pigs and chickens are consumed by humans.....
Hmmm... let’s see. Fish nobody wants to eat are turned into food for fish people do want to eat.
What’s the problem again?
Nobody in their right mind would eat menhaden (bunker) without serious processing. It's not really edible. It makes great fertilizer, margarine and animal feed, though.
The author of this article doesn't know what they are talking about, clearly.
More nonsense by eco terrorists.
Fish for human consumption are worth 10 to 100 times more than as fodder for cattle. (including cats, birds, tropical fish, and fertilizer)
Most of this fish is either byproduct from the preparation of human foods, bycatch (undesirable catch from target fishing) or unsuitable for human consumption. In those rare cases where fish desired by humans are used for fodder the catch exceeds market demand.
Oh, puhleeze. These 'staff writers' need to untwist their panties and take a valium.
What the hell difference does it make if the end product is human food anyway?
Besides, my guess is most of what is used for animal feed is not suitable for human consumption anyway.
how is this being wasted?
arina de pesca is the only industry many third world coastal towns have
Actually, pigs are omnivores, and regularly eat each other in the wild. It’s animals like sheep and cows that develop problems when fed animal-derived feed.
"a high-protein feed for farm animals, insulation for low- income housing, a powerful explosive, and a top-notch engine coolant"
Inside each alarming story from the chronically concerned lies this theme:
“”Human beings are not the only, or necessarily, the most important consumer of these fish. Whatever people take out of the sea needs to be carefully calibrated to ensure that sufficient fish are left to sustain populations of other fish, seabirds and marine mammals which all play a major role in the healthy functioning of the world’s oceans.””
The problem as these alarmists see it is that there are simply too many humans or humans themselves are harmful to the planet and its pristine waters.
Their Eden would have Adam born gay , content to frolic about the garden all day and play with himself at night while the animals lay nearby.
Wow. That’s disgusting. Now Leviticus is beginning to make more sense to me.
Article quotes:
"Skyrocketing pressure on small wild fishes may be putting entire marine food webs at great risk."
"The use of forage fish for animal husbandry competes directly with human consumption in some areas of the world," the authors write. Excessive removal of forage fish could also hurt populations of seabirds and marine mammals that rely upon them as food."
"Whatever people take out of the sea needs to be carefully calibrated to ensure that sufficient fish are left to sustain populations of other fish, seabirds and marine mammals which all play a major role in the healthy functioning of the world's oceans."
About menhaden:
Old Professer noted: The problem as these alarmists see it is that there are simply too many humans or humans themselves are harmful to the planet and its pristine waters.
There is no doubt that the large human population and our capability for altering the environment in numerous ways to serve the needs of humanity has an impact on the environment. Resources which serve the needs of humanity have limits beyond which they will become either uneconomic to utilize or insufficient to serve the need which they once served. There are numerous examples of "wild" resources (this does not necessarily mean a biological resource; "wild" is used to indicate a resource which is either not renewable, such as mineral ores, or not acquired in a manner that enables it to resist depletion) that have been substantially depleted by human activity. (Simple example: U.S. East Coast and upper Midwest hardwood forests. Paul Bunyan's out of business in Minnesota, dontcha know.)
In order for humanity to maintain the lifestyle to which it has become accustomed with an increasing population and increasing pressures on natural resources, inefficiencies and waste will have to be reduced and some traditional "time-honored" ways of doing things will have to change.
But I suspect you already knew that.
The menhaden reduction fishery has been controlled at sustainable levls for quite some time. They are a very prolific fish, and their numbers rebound very rapidly after even very extensive fishing pressure. Other species, not forage fish, are not as prolific. Atlantic cod and the other heavily fished groundfish are not returning in numbers people would like. Those are of far greater concern, IMO.
There’s always one core problem with the “this should be fed to people” argument: people don’t like it. If people liked this feed fish that much it would be fed to people because they’d be buying it for themselves rather than their farm. People aren’t buying it for themselves because it tastes nasty, give it to farm animal. It’s a perfectly workable system, take low end unpleasant tasting cheap fish and turn it into high pleasant tasting pork and chicken, it’s an all natural process.
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