The Protein Crunch by Jason Drew

Author:Jason Drew
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781849896429
Publisher: AUK Authors
Published: 2011-08-31T00:00:00+00:00

Asia now consumes most of the world’s fish. The Japanese eat 66 kilograms of fish per person each year, as opposed to Spain’s 44 kilograms and Britain’s 20 kilograms per person per year. But at 25 kilograms per person, the Chinese alone eat around a third of the world’s fish. The proportion of fish and meat in the Chinese diet is soaring as the population becomes wealthier.

Much of Asia’s fish is farmed, as is the world’s fish, but this is little consolation.

Large-scale fish farms are essentially aquatic feedlots, comparable in intensity to chicken farming, with hundreds of fish living in cramped conditions. Fish farming largely depends on feeding fishmeal to carnivores such as salmon, trout, shrimp and prawns or omnivores such as tilapia. While there is an increasing use of herbivore and omnivore species in aquaculture, such as catfish and some carp species, these farmed fish are still fed fishmeal as part of their diets to promote growth.

Pelagic fish like anchovies and sardines from the seas around South America are one of the principal components of fishmeal. The production of fishmeal has a direct impact on coastal communities, such as those in Peru. The factories produce both employment and pollution. The city of Chimbote on Peru’s coast has 40 fishmeal production facilities, which produce waste effluent poured directly into the sea and chimney smoke causing respiratory problems and skin allergies among many local inhabitants. The costs of producing cheap Scottish and Norwegian-farmed salmon are thus shifted far away to the ecology and social systems of countries like Peru.

The producers of fishmeal claim that their fleets are subject to exemplary environmental protection and conservation management measures: for instance, they do not fish within five miles of a coastline in order to protect the livelihoods of artisan fishermen. According to local fishermen, however, these regulations are simply ignored as they regularly see industrial trawlers near the coast. The regulation of the fishmeal industry has improved dramatically and now ships within the coastal exclusion zones are monitored by satellite-tracking systems and landings monitored for sustainability. Furthermore, the authorities in Peru have now introduced fishing moratoriums in February-March and August-October to protect spawning stocks of anchovies and sardines.

From a total production of less than one million tonnes per year in the early 1950s, by 2006 annual farmed fish production exceeded 50 million tonnes worldwide. Valued at US$78.8 billion, this amounts to almost 50 million tonnes of over one third of man’s global fish consumption. This demand-driven farming is developing unchecked, without governments or consumers understanding its detrimental effect on the seas and wild fish populations.

World aquaculture is heavily dominated by the Asia-Pacific region, which accounts for 89% of production in terms of quantity and 77% in terms of value. The Asia-Pacific region produces most of the world’s carp, oysters, shrimps and prawns. Scotland, Norway and Chile are the leading producers of farmed salmon, whereas sea bass are increasingly farmed in many countries of the world.

In 2009, the FAO estimates that 70% of world marine fish production was used for direct human consumption.

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