Farmed fish spend their lives in overcrowded and filthy enclosures (too much fish defecating and feeding in the same cubic meters of water). Their feed is ridden with chemicals and antibiotics.
It's the same issue as "normal" poultry vs "aviary" poultry.
I personally prefer to eat less fish and meat than eating animals that are bred and raised in awful conditions that optimize for revenue; the quality of the output speaks for itself.
Unfortunately, there are numerous problems with fish farming.
For one, predatory farmed fish, such as salmon, are often fed from fish meal made from wild fish, which means there's no net benefit.
Fish are farmed intensively, in much denser populations than found in the wild. In this type of environment, water pollution and animal welfare are serious concerns — disease and parasites such as lice are a big problem. It's not hard to find reports of farmed fish in horrifying condition and conditions.
As a side note, intensive farming of pigs, chickens and cattle is a major source of pollution of inland waterways. This is a direct cause of the dramatic decline of freshwater fish populations in many parts of the world.
I was under the impression that farm raised fish (compare to natural fish) has the same problems as farm/cage raised chicken/beef/etc...which is excessive use of antibiotics.
Fish farming is a spooky rabbit hole to look into. All kinds of species, from saltwater to fresh, crustacean to finish, are fed fish that were caught in the wild, fed piles of antibiotics (this part gets really concerning, the implications for water sources connected to the farms are terrible), and all kinds of manual systems for removing polluting farm waste are employed where the pollution simply moves from farm to surrounding ecosystems.
There are better systems that are more sustainable, but my understanding is that most tilapia (for example) you'll find in a freezer at your grocery store is probably produced this way. It's really gross. Farmed shrimp and prawns are another one to stay far away from - they're labelled sustainable, but the farming practices are absurd. I don't trust any sustainability labels, anywhere.
Another one is Atlantic salmon farmed in the Pacific Ocean. That stuff is so gnarly. There's a reason British Columbia is shutting down a lot of these farms (and reviewing the remaining farms in 2022). It's bad for the environment, the product is not healthy, and it's incredibly inefficient. Yet somehow this product was labelled the smart choice for years.
It isn't like farmed salmon is a crucial staple food without substitutes - nobody will starve without it. There are plenty of other fish breeds that are less damaging across their production lifecycle.
Farmed salmon is a luxury good and we shouldn't be harming the environment for that.
To be clear, this story is about farmed fish from inland, fresh-water fish farms. No sea involved. Fish farms can still cause pollution, of course, but if well managed they should be no worse than any other farm.
> Farmed fish (in this US mostly tilapia and salmon) have other issues, but mercury isn't a generally concern.
I'm an amateur Bay Area fisherman, so as someone eating fish out of the Bay, am often studying up on mercury and PCB levels in species. My understanding is this is not true- farmed salmon are often fed baitfish meal (sardine/anchovy etc). They eat orders of magnitude higher quantities of these fish than they would in the wild, so they bioaccumulate more toxins than they would outside the farm. Let me see if I can find a source.
Some quick googling returns sources supporting both sides, so I'd take either position with a grain of salt.
What an oddly narrow comment. Many types of seafood are farmed and very few have the environmental concerns that Salmon has when it is farmed adjacent to natural waters. It's almost like you lead with cynicism and then leave no room for facts.
Do you mean farmed salmon? Aka 'fish' meat which, due to crap the fish are being fed resembles more pork than wild salmon? Not even talking about the amount of antibiotics, growth hormones and god knows what other chemistry pumped into them to get as much $$ as possible.
2 of the most healthy fish to eat on paper are pretty dangerous these days - tuna due to buildup of mercury and other metals since it is a relatively long-living predator (you can't avoid this), and farmed salmon due to stuff above. Maybe a proper wild one is still OK to eat often (and priced accordingly), but farmed ones are generally subpar food I try to avoid.
Well this is the main reason I prefer to buy farm raised fish. It might not do much to help the eco system, or my health, but I feel at least the fish I am eating was raised with the purpose of being eaten. Further, I find it rather gross that fishermen essentially "throw away" everything they don't want.
There are also huge human health concerns, because a lot of the feed of aquaculture fish (53% of fish consumed by humans today) is made from other caught fish, which leads to toxic bioaccumulation:
> farmed fish can harm wild populations because often their feed, made from wild fish such as sardines and anchovies, is caught at sea and they can cause pollution
Farmed fish can be on par with wild fish (healthier in some ways, less nutritious in others) depending on the farming methods, which have improved since the old days.
It's the same issue as "normal" poultry vs "aviary" poultry.
I personally prefer to eat less fish and meat than eating animals that are bred and raised in awful conditions that optimize for revenue; the quality of the output speaks for itself.
- https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/farm-raised-fish-...
- https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/apr/01/is-farmi...
- https://www.peta.org/issues/animals-used-for-food/factory-fa...
- http://content.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1663604,0...
- https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/sep/10/scottish...
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