The silent slaughter at sea

12 Jun 2024 Leave a comment

by oxveg in Articles

When making the case for vegetarianism, campaign groups generally concentrate on the 83 billion plus land animals that are killed for meat globally every year (one billion is a thousand million). Understandably so. It is relatively easy for people to empathise with fellow mammals such as cattle, pigs, sheep, and goats, and, to a lesser extent, the poultry and other birds that make up 95 per cent of the land animals slaughtered.

In contrast, fish are often forgotten, perhaps because they inhabit an environment that is alien to most people, even though they too are oxygen-breathing and are widely recognised as sentient beings with intelligence and the ability to feel pain. Nature documentaries often depict fish swimming in large shoals, seemingly with no more individuality than the bees in a hive. More significantly, perhaps, fish “production” (comprising wild-caught and farmed fish) is measured in tonnage, rather than in numbers.

Estimating the number of fishes killed for food is difficult: a tonne of fish could consist of 100 individuals weighing on average ten kilograms each, or 1000 fishes each weighing one kilogram. However, two recent reports published in the peer-reviewed journal Animal Welfare have estimated the numbers of wild-caught and farmed fishes killed annually based on the tonnages and average weight at slaughter for each species. In summary, the authors found that:

  • between one and three trillion fishes are killed for food every year (one trillion is a thousand billion)
  • on average, 1.1-2.2 trillion wild fishes were caught annually between 2000 and 2019
  • wild-caught fish represent 87% of all vertebrate animals used for food or animal feed in 2019
  • an estimated 124 billion farmed fishes (range 78-171 billion) were killed for food in 2019

Thus, the number of fishes killed for food is more than an order of magnitude greater than the number of land animals killed for meat. The number of farmed fishes killed for food alone exceeds the number of land animals slaughtered. (Despite the ten-fold difference in numbers of wild-caught and farmed fishes, in terms of tonnage the annual production of farmed fish now exceeds wild-caught fish by more than 30 million tonnes: 122.6 versus 91.3 million tonnes in 2020.) According to Compassion in World Farming: “wild-caught fish are generally killed without stunning and suffer very poor welfare for extended periods both during and after capture.” Not that farmed fish fare much better. For example, the cruelty of the Scottish salmon farming industry and the pollution that it causes is well documented. In the words of the Norwegian veterinary professor and fish expert Trygve Poppe: “No normal human being would eat farmed salmon if they knew what was going on in the cages.”

To make matters worse, around half of all wild-caught fish (between 490 and 1,100 billion individuals) are converted to fishmeal and fish oil, most of which is fed to farmed animals, including farmed fish and crustaceans (according to industry data, 70% of fishmeal and 73% of fish oil is used in aquaculture). For example, an estimated 440 wild-caught fish are needed to rear a single farmed salmon. Most (90%) of the wild fish that are converted to feed could be fed directly to people, illustrating the inefficiency of the system.

In summary, fish are killed for food in far greater numbers than land animals and they generally suffer a cruel and painful death. The scale of the slaughter is unfathomable, their suffering is unimaginable.

Paul Appleby

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