“It’s a $78 billion industry that’s killing you.”
Fish farming is an obscene business. It exists simply to create a massive amount of fish more quickly, cheaply and efficiently.
Cramming thousands of fish into tiny pens creates disease and pollution. Under the pens you’ll find fish waste and uneaten commercial feed, all of which degrades the water.
Chemicals are needed to keep us from getting sick and to keep things clean,medicines like antibiotics and vaccines as well as disinfectants, and substances used to stop cages rusting. It all ends up in us, in the water, and eventually in you.
To combat sea lice, a pesticide once commonly used was emamectin benzoate, which when given to rats and dogs caused tremors, spinal deterioration and muscle atrophy.
Eating wild fish is not the answer either, apart from reducing fish stocks to the edge of extinction by overfishing, you’ve made wild fish also dangerous to eat.
That’s because of PCBs? PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls).
These industrial pollutants are absorbed by us aquatic wildlife and then get into you. And PCBs are not exactly yummy foods.
Plus there are the microplastics, plastics so small you can’t see them, but you can feel them. Approximately eight million metric tons of plastics enter the oceans annually and a lot of that ends up in the seafood you eat.
And mercury. Mercury is in the air from coal-burning power plants and factories and it settles into lakes, rivers, and oceans where it starts working its way up the seafood chain to you.
You can’t see, smell, or taste it either: it just ends up in you, poisoning the kidneys and nervous system.
There is no good way to eat fish, but there is a simple thing you can do.
Stop eating me, stop eating all sea animals. Going vegan will be good for you, good for me and good for the planet.
