I would murder that table
I’m a lazy vegetarian — I’ll sometimes eat chicken or red meat in small quantities if I’m traveling or a guest in someone’s home (my scruples weigh less than putting a burden on someone else), but that doesn’t happen often…once every few months, maybe? But on one thing I do not compromise: I love seafood. I’d eat it every day if I could. I guess that makes me a pescatarian rather than a vegetarian.
So this is handy. The LA Times has an article on ethical seafood consumption, and it links to the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch, which lists all the varieties of seafood and whether they were ethically caught and managed.
A lot of it is about the source. Don’t buy fish from Chinese factories — they basically employ slave labor, overfish, and leave a trail of dead bodies behind them. Don’t eat fish caught by trawling, which damages the environment…and Americans and Canadians are guilty of that. Most of the recommended fish and shellfish are farmed. Unfortunately, most of the seafood we buy isn’t labeled with the method of capture — cod is OK if caught on a pole&line, not so ethical if dredged up by a trawler. That’s not on the label, though!
Also, it doesn’t help that a lot of the responsible farmed seafood are molluscs & shrimp & squid, which I’m very fond of, but gives my wife the heebie-jeebies. I can only eat weird marine invertebrates when she’s not around, and she’s almost always around. I guess I’m insufficiently dedicated to my food, because I’d rather have her in the house than a bucket of clams…
Mmmmmm. Big bucket of steamer clams, with some crab on the side, and calamari, and a salmon fillet…
I eat salmon mostly and some shrimp. My morning snack is a packet of salmon after a banana and potato chips. Been trying to steer away from beef again lately.
So clams are good? Cool.
I can’t touch squid or octopus. It just feels wrong to eat them. However, I would love it if we started growing meat in a lab. For reasons.
I fear I’m a bit like H.P. Lovecraft when ot comes to seafood: Things with scales and tentacles are a topic for horror stories, not food!
I use to eat fish when I was akid, but only in dishes that were so strongly seasoned you don’t taste the actual fish.
Cuttlefish are delicious.
Dog is delectable! If you get a chance you should try it!
https://www.elwooddogmeat.com/
@ 3
Oddly, I love Lovecraft (Well, not his racism.) AND seafood.
@ 3
Oddly, I love Lovecraft (Well, not his racism.) AND seafood. Just this weekend I was munching on at the lunch special maki rolls at my local Japanese place while studying a Call of Cthulhu scenario I’m running this week.
Whoops! Sorry. I thought the first attempt failed.
We are not vegetarians. But, we consume very little ‘red’ meat, a good amount of poultry and lots of grains and vegetables. When I was young we got fish sold the day it was caught and it was fresh and tasted mild and a little hint of the ocean. I really enjoyed that. We used to be able to get wonderful abalone, sashimi and delicate smoked tuna. But, over the years the quality has deteriorated terribly. A report I read a few years ago confirmed that most of the shrimp were rotting and soaked with sweetened water before sale. The fish in the markets stinks and taste horrible. I read that fish farming is wasteful and contaminates the waters around it. The salmon mostly has to have artificial coloring added. Makes me sad.
Shouldn’t we distinguish between bottom trawling and mid-water trawling? One has considerable bycatch concerns and high carbon emissions, while the other has those things but also tears up benthic habitats.
Mmmmmm. Big bucket of steamer clams, with some crab on the side, and calamari, and a TUB OF WARM CLARIFIED BUTTER.
shermanj @ # 9: I read that fish farming is wasteful and contaminates the waters around it.
That also depends on lots of variables. Some fish farming is done in artificial ponds (levees surrounding flooded flatland) by raising a net laid on the bottom before introducing the fish (themselves fed with grain-based kibble): about as clean as meat culture gets (though of course doing it on the cheap/quick produces pollution of different types). Most farmed catfish is raised that way, and ends up in fast-food sandwiches.
shremanj @ #9
Also mussel farming if anything cleans up the water.
I like seafood of pretty much all types, but with so many fish stocks in active collapse right now I feel guilty eating any of it.
You could make an a strong argument that “seafood” is actually the cruelest and least sustainable animal-derived product of all. (Not even including slavery and other cruelty to humans.) Massive declines everywhere.
Farmed fish are gross – it’s just another factory farm, and the fish are swimming in a soup of disease and waste – and also super nonsustainable.
I urge everyone to try Gardein fish fillets (for fish and chips / fishsticks). Also, I’ve had amazing calamari etc. made from mushrooms.
PS – love you @5 skeptuckian!
PPS – Autobot Silverwynde yes! cellular seafood is coming any day now!
There are serious environmental problems associated with farmed salmon. Like most industries it has money to pay lobbyists to sweet talk politicians into ignoring them. Nothing like salmon fillet with a greenback garnish.
hilaryrettig1 @ #15
Even seafood like farmed mussels?
I don’t actually like most seafood, so I am disinterested personally, but I have yet to see any reason farmed mussels are bad for the environment or cruel except that they are eventually killed.
And all this time the cephalopoda thought you were their friend!
X-D
In the USA at least, perhaps be aware of this:
https://www.fda.gov/food/consumers/advice-about-eating-fish#6553ce504f677
“Come for the freak, stay for the [sea]food!” (The Simpsons, S04E08)
In response to my concerns about fish farming
@12 Pierce R. Butler said: That also depends on lots of variables.
I reply: you are exactly right and the comments that follow support the vast differences in how clean and responsible fish farming is.
@13 jazzlet says: Also mussel farming if anything cleans up the water.
I reply: that is true, since mussels are filter feeders
There are so many factors: location, diligence in keeping the project clean, the impact of a fish farm in the ocean on the other nearby denizens (predators, parasitesand those that groom some fish. The biggest variable factor in ‘aquaculture’ and fish farming is the intent and actions of the people involved. I’ve had catfish from a pond kept scrupulously clean that was fried within hours of ‘harvest’, and it was clean, fresh and sweet tasting. I’ve bought fish at the grocery store (not recently or anymore) that smelled and tasted like it was already rotting when purchases.
‘Dear John’ the FDA gave us an incomplete and misleading ‘food pyramid’ and food labels. They are far from the best source of information on food in the united states.
shermanj, you are confusing the USDA with the FDA .
And a suggestion on fish selection, largely based on heavy metal toxicity does not a food pyramid make.
@9. shermanj : “The salmon mostly has to have artificial coloring added. Makes me sad.”
Adam Ruins Everything has this two minutes 37 seconds long clip on some of the issues with Salmon and Tuna here although I must admit it never stops me with salmon especially being a fave of mine.
StevoR, just checking… do you find Adam Ruins Everything to be authoritative ab initio?
(if not, why adduce his name as such?)
—
Anyway, fish. Got it.
Cheery contemplation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_zone_(ecology)#See_also
@ 26 Morales
One assumes he’s naming it because he’s linking to it, you dolt.
And Adam Ruins Everything doesn’t claim to be “authoritative”, so why would you expect StoveR to make such a daft claim?
Do you have a rebuttal to StevoR’s linked content or just waffling on?
Maybe John wanted a reason to use ab initio in a sentence? Adam’s sources flash briefly on the screen and he did ruin himself.
One now wonders what’s up with the dead zone. That wasn’t a very well handled segue. I suppose we are supposed to fill in the details ourselves.
Ah, the SoggyBog blurps up another gob of feculence:
Me: “do you find Adam Ruins Everything to be authoritative ab initio?”
BoggySam: “One assumes he’s naming it because he’s linking to it, you dolt.”
Ah, I see, O SoggyBooger: you assume StevoR finds Adam Ruins Everything to be authoritative ab initio on the basis that he linked to it.
(Me, I don’t need to assume when I can just ask, as I did)
I didn’t say the channel claims to be “authoritative”, I asked StevoR why he adduced it with the implication of authoritativeness.
It was a straightforward question, you dolt.
(heh)
hemidactylus,
Perhaps prima facie :)
You know, there’s a blog on this network called “Oceanoxia”.
(Point is, fishies live in the water, and humans are polluting the fuck out of the oceans)
Speaking of fishing. X-D
Actually, the post is about fish, not about fishing, bub.
—
Ah well, let’s have some content instead of PusBag’s fishing expedition.
Fish bone:
Pescatarian → See food, eat food?
Whaddayareckon, bub?
Dedicated to the NoisyBob:
vegan, vegetarian, pescatarian, flexitarian, pollotarian, fruitarian.
(Off the top of my head, not including variants such as lacto-ovo vegetarian or beegan.)
The FDA is moribund. The USDA, based on info from reliable sources, is owned and operated by ‘huge Agri-corps and is not to be trusted in critical matters.
I must say, most of the earlier comments here, whether you agree with them or not, were at least positive contributions. However, it is quite sad that someone has now splattered this discussion with personal attack verbal diarrhea (including nasty name-calling vomit) and made it odious (obtuse pun intended).