Pesctarians. vs. Vegetarians

I believe very strongly that eating fish is wrong because fishing practices are unsustainable and many species are being fished to extinction. Trawling means huge nets scoop up anything and everything, and often damage the sea bed, and corals etc that grow there. Then because of fishing quotas a lot of what is caught is dumped back in the sea, but by that time it's mostly dead.
Fish stocks and marine health are huge environmental issues that most people seem quite happy to ignore. I am a vegetarian, and fish would be absolutely the last meat I would consider eating.

Well said.

Animals that only eat plants have really, really, really big stomachs.
Cows, Horses, Giraffes, Hippos, just sayin............

Sorry, horses actually have very small stomachs, relative to their size. I'm not up on hippos and giraffes. :flowerforyou:

This thread is mostly for vegetarians/vegans, but anyone is welcome to join in.

I've been vegetarian for about 2 years now for purely animal rights reasons. I was one of those people who was really annoyed when fish eaters would call themselves vegetarian - if for nothing else that it confused the terminology. When I go to restaurants, lox cream cheese is listed as a vegetarian option. Or fish. Obviously non-vegetarians are confused.

With that being said, I'm human. Every now and then I will cave and snag something with fish in it. Up until last week, I probably had fish a handful of times in 2 years. I never considered myself a pesctarian because deep down I know that fish are animals - and I felt guilty despite my cravings.

So - why am I considering eating fish now? What about the industry is less traumatizing than the butchering of cows and the downright horrible conditions chickens are kept in? I have seen a few horrible things in Japan - but do we import from Japan?

A couple things to keep in mind when responding:

a) All the respect for vegans - but avoiding wool and not eating honey I think is unnecessary. Although I don't buy leather products that stem from animal death, I just don't personally agree with all of your opinions on animal by products.

b) I think we're supposed to eat meat as a species, but I chose not to due to the treatment of the animals - I didn't want to support the industry

I guess i'm looking for reasons why I should remain vegetarian - because to me it seems like fish are caught in their environment, where they have lived a life, and then we eat them.

Thoughts? (And of course lets keep this civil)

I can't help with links etc...What I can tell you is the pictures I've seen of fishing/trolling is awful. I'm not trying to be gross but if they're brought up from the deep, too fast, they basically explode-It's disgusting. I beleive they feel pain, therefore it's not a humane thing to do in my eyes.
My 2 cents.
Proud Vegetarian for 4 years.
Good luck with your decision.

I believe very strongly that eating fish is wrong because fishing practices are unsustainable and many species are being fished to extinction. Trawling means huge nets scoop up anything and everything, and often damage the sea bed, and corals etc that grow there. Then because of fishing quotas a lot of what is caught is dumped back in the sea, but by that time it's mostly dead.
Fish stocks and marine health are huge environmental issues that most people seem quite happy to ignore. I am a vegetarian, and fish would be absolutely the last meat I would consider eating.

Bottom trawling over reefs has been outlawed nearly everywehere. Furthermore, you can choose to eat fish that are obtained in other manners. Most of the targeted species for bottom trawls are in the grouper, snapper, cod, shrimp, rockfish, and squid. You can choose to not eat those particular species.

See FishWatch page from NOAA for sustainably harvested fish options: http://www.nmfs.noaa.gov/fishwatch/#

For those who are interested, having trouble finding what really goes on in fish farms vs. capturing fish wild, how they are treated from there to our plate. Can't find any good resources (but a ton of awesomely snarky comments)

Go ahead, call me a useless jerk again...but here you go...

http://www.marksdailyapple.com/salmon-factory-farm-vs-wild/

I am trying to work my way back to being ?????? (I am not sure what I would call how I ate) which was pure vegan except I did eat fish about twice a month. I won't drink milk from a cow, currently eating meat, however it is bought from an organic farm about 30 miles from me. I eat so very little red meat that the meat loaf muffins I cooked 3 weeks ago are still in my freezer.

I will not eat farmed fish I don't care what you say simply because they are being raised on a diet that isn't natural, which is what most farms do to chickens, pigs and beef. Cows are meant to eat grass, not corn, not soy by products injected with god knows what.

We are slowly killing ourselves with our "food". I grow my own tomatoes, cucumbers, beans, peppers because I don't trust what is in the stores. As we are learning here, we are what we eat and the outlook from todays modern farm is not pretty.

Animals that only eat plants have really, really, really big stomachs.
Cows, Horses, Giraffes, Hippos, just sayin............

Pretty sure that nonhuman primates that are mainly leaf and plant eaters don't have really, really, really big stomachs. They have a longer large intestine for help with digestion, but that's just about it. Just wanted to comment on that.

As for the OP, I don't have any links but my personal opinion is taking the fish from their natural environment is worse than having something from a factory... well in a way. I once read in a Vegetarian Times magazine a few years ago that 75% of the tuna fish population was depleted. It's possible that number was over exaggerated, but still. We fish like crazy, crazy, crazy people. We don't allow the fish to grow to their natural size. We are catching sea life faster than it can reproduce in efficient numbers. We are just absolutely clearing out the ocean/lakes/whatever. So, if you need a reason to not eat fish, I would say that it's best to do it to preserve the future generations of fish life... or soon it's going to be all gone. Again, sorry no links... but I've seen and read things in the past, and it's only logical with the rate we fish and eat fish, they are going to be gone sooner rather than later.

I'm vegan, for a combination of health/ethical reasons. I have absolutely no problem with anything that anybody chooses to eat. I don't like to throw my opinions about food around, because I don't like people shoving their opinions at me. HOWEVER, you asked, so I'm going to tell you.

If you think that fish aren't harmed as much as other animals, you are terribly incorrect. More than 40 percent of all the fish consumed each year are now raised on land-based or ocean-based aquafarms where fish spend their entire lives in cramped, filthy enclosures and where many suffer from parasitic infections, diseases, and debilitating injuries. In intensively crowded aquafarms, small fish are bullied and killed by larger fish, so fish are continually sorted to make sure that faster-growing individuals are moved to the appropriate size grouping. At each sorting, they are netted or pumped out of their tanks and dumped onto a series of bars and grates with varying space gaps to divide them by size and redistribute them into different netted cages or tanks; small fish slip through the small grates while larger fish fall through the larger gaps. This practice, called "grading," is very stressful and results in painful scrapes and a loss of protective scales, leaving the animals vulnerable to disease.

If that isn't cruel, than I don't know what is.

As far as your comment about not understanding why vegans don't wear wool, I urge you to take a look at how wool is produced in the industry today. It isn't like it was 50 years ago, where cute little sheep were gently shaved of their hair.

FYI to everyone: Keep in mind, despite whatever our opinion are, those who choose not eat meat in some capacity are still making a difference for animals and the environment.

That's a debatable point, but I'll leave it at that :bigsmile:

Like I said, this is a civil thread. Make your point or go away. Since my family has went vegetarian, we have saved at least 3 pounds a week for 112 weeks. If 100 people in our community did that, our grocery store would absolutely stop buying as much, and thus, put less strain on chicken farms, etc, to produce = less chickens dying.

I was trying to be civil by not chiming in...but fine. If you honestly think a few vegetarians really impacts the demand for meat and animal by products....you are seriously deluded. If anything you're helping out either a local farmer or Monsanto(depending on what your veggie choices are). If EVERYONE changed, sure it would make a difference...but the fact is, it's FAR from a majority and the demand is still so huge for meat that I'm sure they don't feel the so called 'dent' that vegetarians and vegans are putting in their business.

This is true and this is also what I am fighting for change in the food industry. Get rid of the likes of Monsanto and Cargill and other companies that support factory farming. Get back to sustainable and humane farming practices.

I read an article earlier today about how grass fed beef actually helps the environment, not hurts or hinders it.

Those few of us that are in the Paleo world and eat via humane and sustainable farming practices are by far in the minority also.

Here is my problem with you crazy animal rights veggie heads. What's wrong with eating locally raised meat or other animal products that you know are not raised in a bad environment? Or fish that are caught at sea? Why do you all insist on eating nothing that comes from any animal? You just don't make any sense.

I am trying to work my way back to being ?????? (I am not sure what I would call how I ate) which was pure vegan except I did eat fish about twice a month. I won't drink milk from a cow, currently eating meat, however it is bought from an organic farm about 30 miles from me. I eat so very little red meat that the meat loaf muffins I cooked 3 weeks ago are still in my freezer.

I will not eat farmed fish I don't care what you say simply because they are being raised on a diet that isn't natural, which is what most farms do to chickens, pigs and beef. Cows are meant to eat grass, not corn, not soy by products injected with god knows what.

We are slowly killing ourselves with our "food". I grow my own tomatoes, cucumbers, beans, peppers because I don't trust what is in the stores. As we are learning here, we are what we eat and the outlook from todays modern farm is not pretty.

Holy God, AMEN!!!

I do use some dairy products..............but they are freshly milked grass fed cows that the Amish own, raise, let graze and humanely slaughter like in the olden days.

ModernFemme -

I am a meat eater, but I will not eat fish unless I know for a fact that it is wild caught..................

Fish farms are no different than those CAFO farms that cows, pigs and chickens go to to get fattened up and then slaughtered.

For those who are interested, having trouble finding what really goes on in fish farms vs. capturing fish wild, how they are treated from there to our plate. Can't find any good resources (but a ton of awesomely snarky comments)

Wild-caught fishes:

Fish gets caught via some method. Onboard processing depends on the species but most of the time, the head and fins are left on, and the fish is put on ice. There's a lot of regulation about removing heads and reducing volume on-board. One of the many reasons shark finning was so successful was that they would not keep the whole body, but just remove the parts they wanted and catch enormous volumes of fins. This also happened with tunas in the 1960's, 1970's, and 1980's. Fishermen used to remove the head and tailfin to make more space in the freezer thereby catching much more fish than they originally had capacity for. This is illegal for most species now and is heavily regulated. Some species can be deheaded onboard still. When the boat docks, the fish are removed, separated into bins by size. NOAA inspectors come on board to certify that the fish were caught legally and the catch is within the legal limits. They usually go straight to auction where they are sold by the pound. The price varies by size of fish. Larger fish have more harvestable meat on them than smaller fish so they are worth proportionally more per pound than smaller fish. They get bought by suppliers. NOAA is responsible for all the regulation of offshore US artesanal, commercial, and recreational fisheries. ICCAT is responsible for most of the research done on the status of Fisheries in the North Atlantic. Other agencies, some international, some regional, some federal exist to maintain quality in the supply. Fish and Wildlife is responsible for the regulation of inland fisheries with exception of species that travel from ocean to freshwater (salmon).

After that, they are transported to a processing center owned by the supplier. The process changes a lot once they reach here. Some of them are simply fileted, packed, and shipped out to grocers. Nonedible parts are usually ground up and used for fertilizer or some other non-food means. Some suppliers add preservatives to keep color and to maintain freshness. Others do not. Some species of fish require preservatives for the meat to make it safely to market. Others can last longer without it. All the preservatives used during this process are heavily regulated by the FDA and deemed safe for human consumption, of course. Once the fish make it to market, they are usually further fileted into smaller portions for sale to the public by your grocer. The processing and transportation of fishmeat is regulated by the FDA, department of transportation, and the USDA. DOC (department of commerce) is involved with price regulation and financial management of fishmeat supply.

Farmed fish undergo a lot more regulation than wild-caught fish. There are a lot of rules about water quality, drainage, waste removal, feeding, and health monitoring of these animals. There are almost as many regulations for farmed fish as their are for agriculture. The largest fish farms (monetarily speaking) in North America are found in estuaries and are most commonly associated with salmon farming. Salmon can be grown very effectively in captivity. This is not true for most other species of fish. The salmon fry are caught post-spawning from wild populations. They are reared in tanks where the waterflow is often coming from the estuary itself from where they were hatched. Once they reach sufficient size, they are put into the farm area where they are fed a regular diet of krill, shrimp, and other food products. The food they are fed is designed for fast growth. Once they reach sufficient size, they are killed (often beheaded), put on ice, and shipped to a supplier for processing and distribution. North American fish farms are regulated by Fish and Wildlife, DOC, the USDA, and the FDA.

There are literally thousands upon thousands of regulations on the books for US fisheries, but this is the general process.

There's some great information on how our fisheries work here:

http://www.nmfs.noaa.gov/fishwatch/#
http://www.nmfs.noaa.gov/
http://www.fws.gov/
http://www.fas.usda.gov/ffpd/fish.asp
http://www.iccat.es/en/

I eat meat. I eat fish. I eat veggies.

So do animals. Its part of nature, its how life goes on.

With that being said - Factory farms are very, very nasty places. I understand why they exist (to lower cost) but IMO the meat you buy from a factory farm is far inferior, in addition, I think animals should be allowed to live AS ANIMALS, not in a cage.

I have NO problems eating range fed beef, or free range chickens, because they live and die as animals are supposed to.

IMO, "animal rights" reasons are one of the worst reasons to not eat meat. (Assuming you are eating free range meats) because its just part of life...

But I really don't care what others do... as long as they don't encroach on MY rights to eat as I choose, I will help defend theirs.

I agree with a lot of what this post says. I was a vegetarian for over 20 years for animal rights and personal preference. But is is not a simple question of what is humane and what is not. If your main concern is the treatment of the animal, despite what type of animal it is, then you would be able to eat anything that you felt was slaughtered humanely. There are local ranchers, and free range, grass fed etc that are beginning to offer more options. The other option is do it yourself. Go fishing. My cousin raises pigs humanely and then when the time comes they are slaughtered and eaten.

I no longer eat a vegetarian diet, although I still eat heavily that way, because the vegetarian diet based on those same issuses also is problematic. When you look in to the soy industry and Monsanto, the fuel footprint of imports from around the world, etc.

The bottom line is no one can tell you what is right for you. You will have to decide that for yourself and then be confident in your choice.