288868 Thu Apr 04 19:17:28 -0800 2002 13 27 General Chowhounding Topics 0 1561033 from the NYT Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/03/dining/03TUNA.html Thu Apr 04 19:17:28 -0800 2002 0 9lives 1 1561056 A fascinating article (by R.W. Apple, who's always worth reading). Ironically, if scientists rather than accountants were in charge, farming fish for food would be superior both gastronomically and ecologically to catching them in the open ocean by our present methods, which are the equivalent of harvesting apples by chopping down the trees. Fri Apr 05 04:39:10 -0800 2002 1561033 0 John Whiting 2 1561078 I disagree that accountants are the obstacle to fish farming. Plucking fish out of pens is far cheaper than paying the fuel, boat and crew costs for finding and catching them. Furthermore, farming has a large supply chain advantage relative to fishing, as mentioned in the tuna article. Farmers can harvest to fill orders whereas fishermen must catch then attempt to sell a perishable item. Therefore, the challenges in fish farming seem to be with engineering and science rather than economics. Mind you, farming certain species has become cost effective, most notably salmon. As farming takes hold for all fish species, the marketplace will certainly develop where there's premium quality producers like this tuna guy, as well as less quality - and perhaps unhealthy - mass stuff reminiscent of the recent NYT article on the beef industry. -UD Fri Apr 05 11:25:57 -0800 2002 1561056 0 Uncledave 3 1561105 Not sure how many fish will adapt to farming, especially in a tank. Most whitefish species develop "sores" most unpleasant to look at. There is no substitute for ocean fish who follow their natural food chain and are much less subject to diseases than their penned cousins. Farmed fish also have less taste. Remember what fish do in water - everything. Fri Apr 05 12:34:23 -0800 2002 1561078 0 gourmound 4 1561120 That's my point. It's not an accounting challenge, it's a scientific / engineering one. How can you raise good fish in captivity? Maybe somebody will figure out how to corral 20 square miles of ocean and productively grow good fish. Fri Apr 05 14:17:54 -0800 2002 1561105 0 Uncledave 3 1561166 "I disagree that accountants are the obstacle to fish farming." Sorry, you didn't understand. I said that accountants were the obstacle, not to fish farming per se, but to doing it in a manner which was beneficial rather than destructive. Fri Apr 05 18:03:50 -0800 2002 1561078 0 John Whiting 4 1561170 For instance, salmon are being farmed organically and low-density in the Scottish Orkneys, with excellent results. Fri Apr 05 18:19:53 -0800 2002 1561166 0 John Whiting 1 1561124 It certainly raises a couple of interesting questions. One parallel, is to compare it to the beef industry. Consumer demand has more or less determined how beef is supplied to restaurants and stores. The result, has been - I hesitate to use the word "disastrous" - but it seems the best description to apply to what has happened to the envoirnment and our farming way-of-life. Demand for beef and probably specifically hamburgers, has spawned an industry that has grown almost unchecked, and with very undesirable results. I imagine as consumer demand for Tuna and other varieties of seafood grow (partially in response to people disgusted with the beef industry eating less meat and more seafood) that eventually the Tuna fisheries will become depleted, overfished, and poached, resulting in a situation similar to the Chilean Sea Bass and Atlantic swordfish. The alternative will be to farm species of seafood that consumers find most desirable. Salmon for example. What a mess the salmon farming industry is. Chile exports $1 billion dollars of farmed salmon a year - it ends up often labeled as "Atlantic Salmon" on the meun of your favorite eatery. And, according to an article by Jimmy Langman in the SF Chronicle, Chilean farmed salmon has 75 times the amount of antibiotics than that of farmed salmon from Norway (the second largest exporter of farmed salmon). Unfortunately, it doesn't appear that the seafood farming industry is going to be any more sucessful keeping itself in check than the beef industry is... Link: http://www.sautewednesday.com Fri Apr 05 14:27:57 -0800 2002 1561033 0 Bruce Cole 2 1561193 Interesting point, Bruce, about the beef industry. Especially when you consider the buffalo, which was environmentally much friendlier than cattle and delicious, not to mention the fact that it sustained native American populations. The beef industry moved in, created the supply and crowding out buffalo, and in doing so, perhaps, also created the demand. Sat Apr 06 00:12:32 -0800 2002 1561124 0 Leslie Brenner 3 1561198 "The beef industry moved in, created the supply and crowding out buffalo" One should be aware that the buffalo was deliberately wiped out in order to starve the Indians (Native Americans) into submission. Sat Apr 06 01:34:35 -0800 2002 1561193 0 John Whiting 4 1561209 The buffalo / Indian thing always pushes my buttons, maybe because I'm half Lakota (Souix). So please excuse this rant. The most amazing thing about the buffalo tragedy was the enormous amount of animals killed. We're talking millions here. I remember reading stories and seeing old newspaper photos of herds of buffalo so thick you could step from back to back walking on top of the herd (if you had the guts to climb up that high onto an animals larger than an SUV with a bad temper) and stretching from ten to twenty miles in diameter. Trains stopping and hundreds of people blazing away at the critters and just leaving hundreds or thousands of the carcasses to rot. Maybe just taking a few tongues, humps and steaks for dinner. And buffalo are a lot more majestic than cows. A herd of cows is just a bunch of fat, lazy, grass eating, biological machines. While buffalo are damn forces of nature. 8-10 feet high, this enormous powerful head and shoulders several feet wide. To see a herd of them on the Plains in a deep winter blizzard, facing into it with their eyes squinted but otherwise just ignoring the blasting wind, snow, and ice. Amazing. I think that besides starving out the American Indians the buffalo were killed off because the ranchers and pioneers were just to damn scared of the things. I know I am, I was once trapped in a muddy gulley in the Badlands in South Dakota for a whole day by a herd of anxious buffalo during calfing season. I sure wasn't thinking about carving a steak off of one of them. (Although a nice fresh barely aged buffalo steak, cooked warm, pink, and juicy is a marvelous thing.) If ranchers had worked with the buffalo instead of importing cattle we would be a totally different nation. One, parts of the Plains and Texas that are totally eroded and worn out into desert would still be lush and fertile. Two, we would be a lot healthier in general from eating lower fat and cholesterol buffalo meat and anitbiotics and hormones wouldn't be a big issue because the animals have to graze and so are healthy naturally. Three, (I start to go a bit strange here)I think we would have a lot more respect for ourselves because you are what you eat, and in many parts of the US it's noticeable. Four, (OK this is where I get downright weird and cantankerous) we wouldn't have had so many years of karmic guilt to deal with for decimating the native population. (Although that started with that fiend Columbus importing smallpox laden blankets and such on his second cruise as his way of converting the new world to christianity. That was his interpretation of his orders to bring religion to the world. If there are no more natives then they can't be "pagans." Columbus is single handedly responsible for more deaths than in the whole WWII debacle. In the carribean he caused the deaths of tens of millions within the years 1492-1500.) Sat Apr 06 09:35:12 -0800 2002 1561198 0 The Rogue 5 1561221 Rogue, I knew the general outline of this, but you make it much more vivid. If humans were created by God, he had a wicked sense of humor. May I get one-sixteenth as worked up about this as you? I'm one thirty-second Cherokee. Back in the 60s, one generation closer and I would have been eligible for a grant. :-) Sat Apr 06 12:32:33 -0800 2002 1561209 0 John Whiting 6 1561235 Feel free to get as worked up as you need to... I do... Since I am adopted I havn't been able to register with the Lakota Nation... bummer, I had a friend in grad school in Seattle who was 1/8 Lakota and had a full grant plus a 22k stipend for being registered. I wish I could get paid to go to school. I'd never stop. Instead so far I have spent about 150k on education. I located my biological relatives but they won't give me the info I need to get recognised and the hassle isn't worth it. So instead I volunteered and taught on some res's for awhile. Learned what I needed to know... hung out with the old timers, did my karmic duty... blah, blah, blah ;-)> Sat Apr 06 13:55:39 -0800 2002 1561221 0 The Rogue 7 1561241 Amazing story, Rogue. But, of course, we're drifting ever further from food. If people have follow-up questions/comments, can we ask them to please post them to our Not About Food board? Whoever's first to do so, please reply to this thread advising everyone of the new thread title over there to look for. That way we can keep this board chowcentric, but not lose the interesting discussion. thanks! Sat Apr 06 14:19:10 -0800 2002 1561235 2 The Chowhound Team