

How I Learned to Love Farmed Fish - cwan
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2015134,00.html

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_delirium
This makes sense to me. The problems with fish farming are mostly just
problems with farming in general: animals in close quarters transmit disease
more easily, farmers combating that with mass quantities of antibiotics risk
causing other problems, poor waste management leads to a gross-at-best and
toxic-at-worst environment of farmed animals sloshing about in their own
waste, meat from animals fed on diets very different from their natural diets
might not have the same nutrient profiles, etc., etc.

But none of those are really fish-specific. Perhaps opponents realize that,
and it's mostly a tactical move to keep what they see as an already bad
industry (commercial meat farming) from expanding to a new ecosystem (coastal
waters). Maybe that's even the best tactical move, given political realities.
But I can't help but thinking that I'd rather have some attempt at a real
solution.

What that solution is I'm not as sure about. There are regulation angles,
especially with things that have large potential for collateral damage, like
overuse of antibiotics. There are encourage-the-free-market angles, like
better labeling, or better third-party information sources, that make it
easier for consumers to decide what kinds of farms they want to buy from. And
possibly other angles. I suppose we could all become vegetarians, too, but
that's unlikely.

