I guess I'll have the tofu...

About a month ago I read a big article in the Globe and Mail about farmed vs wild salmon (I can't find the article online but here is the reference - Time To Veto The ''Virtuous' Choice - Focus, Feb. 23, by Cameron MacDonald). Ever since I can remember it being an issue, I've always gone for wild over farmed salmon. My reasons were based purely on the health benefits I receive from eating salmon and wild salmon generally contains more omega-3 fatty acids than farmed salmon. I didn't really think much of the issue but generally disagreed with lice-filled pens, sea lions caught in nets and pink-dyed flesh.

In the 15 or so minutes I spent reading and then re-reading the article I completely changed my mind and suddenly now when I see wild salmon on a menu or a bumper sticker proclaiming "Go wild or go home" I can almost feel myself getting angry about the ignorance of those blowing the wild salmon horn. Let me explain. (Warning!! Long-winded rant follows!)

The article covers the highly controversial problems fish farms are faced with and reasonably explains how these problems are both blown out of proportion in the media and also are readily dealt with by the fish farmers. Antibiotics for example. According to the article, unlike other animals raised for food, salmon are not continuously fed antibiotics when they are not sick. In fact, the farm that was visited in researching for the article lies off the coast of Tofino and hasn't used antibiotics of any sort since 2001. Another issue that recently made headlines was the drowning of sea lions that were caught in the nets surrounding some fish pens. Certainly this is something that must be dealt with, but I don't think halting the farming of fish is the answer. Better nets and pens can be developed to keep predators out and safe from harm.

The article touches on sea lice, fish feed and a few other topics along with possible solutions but the idea that struck a chord most with me was the following: Commercial fisheries are absolutely and entirely unsustainable at the scale they are being carried out now. We are harvesting ocean life at a rate far greater than it can be replaced. We've developed methods to increase our yields at the cost of the entire ocean ecosystem. I have a feeling that the saying "out of sight, out of mind" fully applies here. We have this sense that the ocean is immense and separate from us, but the capacity we have for impacting the ocean and the life within it is huge. Nothing is separate and every system on this planet works in some way with another.

We've developed long-lining, which is devastating to countless ocean creatures. If you've seen the movie "Sharkwater", long-lining is displayed in all it's gruesome glory. If you haven't seen the movie GO WATCH IT RIGHT NOW. Tens of thousands of sharks are are caught each year on long-lines (essentially miles and miles of line with 30,000 - 40,000 baited hooks hanging down). These sharks are hauled in, finned and thrown back into the ocean ALIVE where they soon drown. And the market that drives this ridiculous harvest? The fins are sold on the black market mostly for the production of shark fin soup. I'm getting off topic here, but this environmental catastrophe boils my blood. There is a belief that sharks live forever and don't get sick, that they don't get cancer and live healthily for a long long time. So we make soup out of their fins in the hope that these healthful qualities will pass onto us. IT'S NOT TRUE!!!! That a million dollar industry can be based on such a ridiculous, trivial broth is insane.

So the sharks are massacred. Sharks are ancient. There were sharks in the waters when there were dinosaurs on land. All ocean life today evolved under the selective pressure of the shark. What happens when you take away that population control?

But it's not just the sharks that long-lining affects. Dolphins, sea turtles and other fish species are caught and killed as well and they are just thrown away. Such a cruel, disgusting waste.

Not only do we have long-lining which by itself has a huge impact on ocean life, but we have bottom trawlers. Take a rake and drag it through your garden. Now imagine a rake many, many times bigger dragged over the ocean floor. It will catch crustaceans (because we have to have lobster with our steaks), bottom dwellers such as halibut and others, but it will also plow over reefs killing coral and essentially flatten a once diverse landscape. But we can't see this destruction happening so it's easy to ignore it, right?

Bottom-trawling "... drags the equivalent of an area twice the size of the combined lower 48 states each year" according to this article. In contrast, the fish farming article I mentioned above states that all of the fish farms in the world combined take up a total area of 12 square kilometres, and that includes a 100m buffer around each and every farm. The article suggests a ban of all commercial fisheries which would allow ocean stocks to replenish themselves and would also create a job boom for those in the fish farming industry. These farms are often located in areas with high unemployment and the jobs lost would be more than replaced. Sport fishing would also benefit and this increases tourism and an appreciation for the land and sea.

So, ok, no more wild salmon for me unless I (or someone I know) personally went out there with a rod and hook and caught it. Today however, I read an article in the Georgia Straight that reinforced my feeling that I'm left with no other choice than to eat vegetarian unless I can catch and kill my food with my own two hands (which is entirely impractical for most of us). I was left slightly troubled by the Globe and Mail article when they suggested that as an alternative to making fish feed with mackerel, herring and other small fish harvested from South America, that we supplement the feed with grain. Not just any grain but Canadian grain - that'll make Canadians happy. Making an animal eat anything other than what it has evolved over centuries to eat is not the solution. Here comes a bit of a tangent, but I feel really strongly about it and think it's something everyone should know...

As anyone who has read "The Omnivore's Dilemma" by Michael Pollan knows, trying to change the eating habits of a animal will cause a myriad of problems downstream. For those of you who haven't read the book (GO READ IT), I'm referring to the fact that due to the corn surplus in the United States it was decided that it should be fed to cattle. It's high in calories and gives steaks the marbling we have come to love. However, cows don't eat corn, they eat grass. They have a rumen that is a perfect grass-eating organ. When you feed a cow corn for a long time, their rumen bloats up and gets irritated. This provides and ideal breeding ground for bacteria. The cow gets sick and we are "forced" to give it antibiotics to deal with the infection. The cows are chronically sick and yet the cause of their illness isn't dealt with. We treat the symptoms. By the way, a side effect of this chronic illness and constant dose of antibiotics is the development of drug resistant bacteria, the development of E. coli O157:H7 in particular that will kill us if it gets the chance. We created this problem and instead of going back to the root cause and addressing it, we come up with new ways to make things go the way we want them to.

So, I was pleased to see the Straight article bring up salmon feed and discuss how pillaging the oceans adjacent to other countries (usually poorer countries) to feed our own rich tastes is not the answer and also address the issue of carnivores eating carnivores and the loss of energy that is involved. However, I was disappointed that there was no mention of wild salmon and the fact that it is equally unsustainable, although for slightly different reasons. Will the article and the points it brings up serve as one more argument to keep wild salmon in our stores and restaurants? Neither wild nor farmed salmon are sustainable choices (recently illustrated by the fact that the salmon didn't come back this year along the coast). It is becoming more and more clear that as food shortages increase, costs skyrocket and arable land turns to dust we cannot continue growing food to feed to animals we intend to eat ourselves. It takes 2-4 kilograms of wild fish to produce one kilogram of farmed fish. It takes 2-4 kilograms of grain to produce 1 kilogram of pork, chicken or beef. Not to mention the potential food crops that are now being grown for biofuel which is completely absurd when we produce enough waste oil (from restaurants and the like) that can be recycled and used for the same purpose.

I think that in the coming months and years we are going to have to re-evaluate our eating habits and that will most likely involve sacrifices made more-or-less by everyone (more for some, less for others). They will be sacrifices if we look at the situation and conclude that in order to make progress we have to lose something. Look at it the other way though and instead think of how much we have to gain in terms of our own health and the health of the planet and every living creature it supports. I think there absolutely needs to be a shift to eating more sustainably and eating locally is one way to do that. What is the real cost of the banana that was grown in South America (probably coated with pesticides rendering the soil from which it came sterile and thus requiring the addition of fertilizers which are essentially derived from oil), and shipped to us here in Vancouver by freighter or truck? It's certainly not $0.49/lb. Our food is coated in oil. When we run out of oil, or when it becomes too expensive for the vast majority of the people on this planet, will we/they run out of food too? Perhaps that seems ridiculous but it is becoming very obvious that something needs to change. We are each responsible for the impact we make, both good and bad, and we all have the capacity for both. That's enough ranting and run-on sentences for now. I have to go make dinner and it's likely it will be sourced from pretty low on the food chain, organic and relatively seasonal, which for Vancouver in early spring means I'll probably be having potatoes in some form. It's also pretty likely that it's going to be damn tasty. :) Thanks for listening (reading).