fish farming

[swatiraohnlu]

Some environmental groups, such as Greenpeace, oppose fish farming and want it to be banned or severely restricted. However, supporters of fish farming argue that it is a cheap and sustainable way to provide healthy food to large numbers of people. Should fish farming be banned or severely restricted? Or should it be encouraged?

 

[swatiraohnlu]

Fish farming is harmful to wild fish: Diseases and parasites spread from fish farmed in cages in the sea to wild fish. According to Greenpeace, a typical salmon farm of 200,000 fish produces roughly the same amount of faecal matter as a town of 62,000 people. Faecal matter reduces the oxygen level in water. This leads to toxic algal blooms, which kill marine life. In the northern Pacific, over 1 million farmed Atlantic salmon have escaped from fish farms. These have competed with wild Pacific salmon for food and the number of Pacific salmon has fallen. There has also been interbreeding between escaped and wild fish, weakening the wild stock. To avoid these problems, fish farming should either be banned or be subject to much stricter environmental controls.

 

[swatiraohnlu]

Humans have a right to exploit fish however they want: It is more important that people are well fed than that animals are comfortable. This principle is accepted with land animals: chickens are often raised in cramped conditions. Moreover, nothing is done to stop pain to wild fish when they are caught. People should be encouraged to eat fish. Fish are a nutritious source of protein and are high in essential omega-3 fatty acids. The most efficient way to produce large quantities of fish is to farm them. This avoids the unpredictability, danger and cost involved in trying to catch wild fish in rivers and oceans. Fish farming makes cheap fish available for people to eat: it should therefore be encouraged, not banned.

 

[dimpy.handa]

More than 40 percent of all the fish consumed each year are now raised on land-based or ocean-based aquafarms where fish spend their entire lives in cramped, filthy enclosures and where many suffer from parasitic infections, diseases, and debilitating injuries.

The United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization reports that the aquaculture industry is growing three times faster than land-based animal agriculture, and aquafarms will surely become even more prevalent as our natural fisheries become exhausted.