"But you eat fish, don't you?"
For some reason, fish is the last item to leave the menu of
many would-be vegetarians. It appears to be the least objectionable item among
the flesh foods. Let's look at the reasons why this is so and then examine the
case against fish and the case for vegetarianism.
Fish appears to be not so bad, or even good, from a health
standpoint. Most of the well-publicized evils of meat come from its high-fat
content; and fish is low in fat. Moreover, populations with a high-fish diet
also have a decreased rate of heart disease. Recently, we have found that fish
oil actually appears to have beneficial effects on heart disease.
Fish, secondly, does not seem to be that bad from an
environmental point of view either. Fishing does not cause soil erosion; it does
not encourage groundwater depletion; no forests were cut down to allow fish to
graze. So, what is wrong, from an environmental point of view, with eating fish?
It does not even seem to be such a bad food from an ethical
point of view either. Isn't the main ethical problem with animal products in
general, that they involve putting animals in stifling conditions on
"factory farms," where animals are mutilated, crowded, and kept in
confined conditions for their entire lives? Fish, by contrast, live out their
entire lives in complete freedom, being killed only at the end.
Let's take a look at these arguments, one by one.
Nutritional Hazards of Fish
The argument that fish is a low-fat food is correct but
misses the point of the vegetarian objections to meat on nutritional grounds.
There is more wrong with meat than just fat. Excessive protein, and lack of
fiber, are equally great problems. Fish is low in fat, and that's good; but it
is excessively high in protein, and has zero fiber--and that's bad.
It's worth reviewing some of the evidence about high-protein
diets. First of all, high-protein diets are overwhelmingly linked to
osteoporosis and loss of calcium from the bones. Not only does calcium excretion
increase as protein consumption increases, thus resulting in negative calcium
balance; calcium excretion also increases as the kind of protein shifts from
vegetable to animal protein. Eskimos, for example, take in 2500 milligrams of
calcium each day in the form of fish bones, and suffer from rampant
osteoporosis--worse than Americans suffer from. This is a consequence of their
fish-centered high-protein diet.
Secondly, high-protein diets are strongly associated with
kidney disease. They can do damage to the kidneys and reduce the ability of the
kidneys to function by perhaps half over a lifetime of abuse. There is also a
direct correlation between animal protein consumption and kidney stones.
Thirdly, high-protein diets are well correlated to several
forms of cancer. High-protein diets are a leading dietary variable connected
with the lymphomas, with kidney cancer, and even with colon cancer. Experimental
evidence suggests that protein promotes cancerous growths of all kinds.
Fish contains no fiber and thus eating it compounds all the
various problems--from constipation to colon cancer--connected with lack of
fiber. Finally, fish is high in cholesterol. In fact, in terms of calories
consumed, fish has about twice the amount of cholesterol than does pork or beef.
Some seafoods, such as crab, shrimp, and lobster, contain even more cholesterol.
Studies in which persons switched from a beef / egg diet to a diet high in
chicken and fish have repeatedly shown that there is no drop in serum
The blood-thinning properties of fish oil (which are shared
with aspirin, incidentally) have been widely trumpeted as a possible "magic
bullet" against heart disease. But thinning the blood has other unpleasant
properties. Eskimos, for example, who eat lots and lots of fish, are known to
suffer from fatal nosebleeds; and they also have an increased risk of dying from
strokes. Fish oil is high in cholesterol and fat and appears to promote
And this does not even touch the problems of eating
contaminated fish from polluted waters. So much for the health benefits of fish.
Fishing and the Environment
What about the environmental effects of fishing? It is true
that fish do not consume the resources which most livestock agriculture does.
However, the argument that fishing is environmentally friendly is on a par with
the argument that hunting is environmentally friendly. In both cases, humans
hunt naturally occurring species without growing crops to feed them.
Ecologically speaking, this argument may be correct, but has an extremely
Hunting was in fact the predominant form of meat production
until about 10,000 years ago. At that time, hunting was replaced by agriculture
because there were too few animals available to be hunted to sustain even the
limited population of the day (some have estimated the total human population
may have been 3 million at this time). Even with this limited population,
hunting had resulted in the decimation of numerous species. So pervasive were
the effects of this hunting that numerous species became extinct; not only
species which were directly hunted, but many other species indirectly related to
the hunted species as well. Even in prehistory, humans had a devastating and
negative impact on the environment (albeit over tens of thousands of years) due
The same thing can be said of fishing today. The fishing
habits of the world could not sustain the world's population at more than a
small fraction of the per capita meat consumption of the U. S. and other
developed countries. Yet even this limited yield is having a serious negative
impact on the environment of the sea. The total fish catch has been declining
for years now due to overfishing, making fishing an increasingly expensive and
environmentally damaging hobby.
Moreover, there is one resource we need which fishing does
consume, and that is fossil fuel energy. Commercial fishing is very energy
intensive; it may require as much as 20 calories of fossil fuel energy to
produce one calorie of food energy from fish. This is a ratio which makes fish
50 to 100 times as energy-intensive as production of plant foods, even when
those plant foods are produced under standard Western agricultural methods. At
best, then, fish is merely less damaging than other forms of meat production.
The truth is that fishing on any large scale just won't work. Fishing must
either remain a very small and statistically insignificant form of food, or
become environmentally damaging and draining in important ways when it is
expanded to include any significant portion of the population.
The Ethics of Killing Fish
Finally, we come to the ethical arguments about fish. Killing
fish is all right, we suppose, because the fish live natural lives before they
die; and besides, fish eat other fish. I think that if we put these arguments in
their proper perspective they would appear considerably different. Because fish
are not kept on factory farms, and fish are carnivorous, then it is all right to
kill fish? People are not kept on factory farms either, and people eat other
animals. So is it all right to kill people, and then eat them?
Actually, fish are being kept on "fish
farms" in increasing numbers today, raising significant ethical and
environmental issues. But even if all fish were caught in the wild, what
difference would it make?
Because an animal suffers less in one form of food production
does not mean that it is all right to inflict suffering on that animal in order
to eat that animal as food. We are vegetarians (those of us who are ethical
vegetarians, anyway) because we think that the torture and slaughter of animals
is wrong. So if someone says that a little torture and slaughter is O. K., then
where do we put them? Or what if someone says that torture is wrong, but not
No. Suffering is suffering. If it is wrong to inflict
suffering, and especially if there is a simple, easy, painless way to avoid
inflicting suffering, then we ought not to inflict suffering. Stopping the
killing of animals for food is a principled and easy way to avoid the infliction
Nor does the carnivorousness of most fish matter. The fact
that suffering exists in the world does not give us an excuse or license to go
out and create more suffering. No: we should instead stop inflicting suffering,
and thereby decrease the amount of evil in the world by that small portion for
which we are responsible.
Incidentally, the suffering which fish endure in being caught
is considerably greater than the suffering which they would endure by being
eaten by a bigger fish (which is probably minimal). While fish may stop flopping
around fairly quickly after being caught and hauled on board a shipping vessel,
they can and do survive for an hour, or often several hours, before dying of
suffocation. Imagine having your head held under water as you struggle for air.
Now imagine that this continues until you finally, in desperation, gulp down
water in your lungs, and pass out from asphyxiation. Now, finally, imagine that
the period of time in which you are struggling for air lasts for an hour, or
"Sport" fishing also involves the cruelty of
hooking the fish in its mouth. As the fish struggles for its life, the hook
tears into the flesh in the mouth. The mouth is a very sensitive area in most
fish, so this causes intense pain.
Does this qualify as "torture and slaughter" of an
animal? I think it does. I do not think that this is an activity which
compassionate people engage in when they have a simple and clear path to avoid
such torturing and slaughtering. I further submit that we can easily avoid
participating in such barbaric activities by the simple expedient of not
spending our money on purchases of animals tortured and slaughtered in this way,
and by refusing to participate in the eating of animals killed in this fashion.
And if you object to killing of animals for food at all, vegetarianism is the
To summarize: fish is not a healthy food because it is high
in protein, and high-protein foods have hazards just as real as high-fat foods.
Fish is not an environmentally sound food, but rather an historical dead end
which must have serious destructive effects if practiced on a large scale, just
as hunting is likewise an historical dead end. Finally, killing fish for food is
just as barbaric as killing any other animal for food. Indeed, in some ways the
death of fish is even more horrifying, and certainly takes longer, than the
slaughter of chickens or cows. Murder is murder, death is death, evil is evil.
If we want to oppose evil the least we can do is to stop participating in it.
This is the first step, and the greatest step, in our emergence from the
barbarism of prehistory.