TY - GEN

T1 - Ethical aspects of farming of wild fish

AU - Röcklinsberg, H.

AU - Gräns, A.

AU - Kornum, A.

AU - Gjerris, Mickey

N1 - Conference code: 15

PY - 2019

Y1 - 2019

N2 - Fish consumption is increasingly prompted by e.g. FAO as a healthy source of nutrients and emits fewer greenhouse gases than most types of terrestrial animal production. Besides wild caught fish, traditional aquaculture production covers approximately 50% of global fish consumption and growing-out of wild caught fish meets approximately 20% of global aquaculture production. All these forms of production are related to a number of well-known ethical issues, such as overfishing, by-catch and discard, biodiversity loss, ghost nets, working conditions, food security, etc. Further, a number of fish welfare issues are at stake, such as suffocation in wild catch, and transport, stunning and slaughter in aquaculture. In this paper we’ll focus on farming of wild fish as it is a growing business and has the potential to solve some of these ethical issues, but also raises both old and new concerns. A number of advantages can be seen for the producers in terms of better prediction of the production levels compared with wild catch - increased price control, choice of target species to meet consumer demands, etc. Environmental advantages compared to wild catch are no by-catch and less fuel used – given the feed is not based on wild catch, or by-catch is used as feed. Also, wild fish can suffer from low welfare in terms of malnutrition and could benefit from being fed and being protected from predators. However, some ethical issues remain, e.g. the livelihood of the fishermen, societal perception of fish welfare, feeding with living prey and the sustainability of feed. Thus, this paper highlight some of the important ethical challenges to a new aquaculture practice.

AB - Fish consumption is increasingly prompted by e.g. FAO as a healthy source of nutrients and emits fewer greenhouse gases than most types of terrestrial animal production. Besides wild caught fish, traditional aquaculture production covers approximately 50% of global fish consumption and growing-out of wild caught fish meets approximately 20% of global aquaculture production. All these forms of production are related to a number of well-known ethical issues, such as overfishing, by-catch and discard, biodiversity loss, ghost nets, working conditions, food security, etc. Further, a number of fish welfare issues are at stake, such as suffocation in wild catch, and transport, stunning and slaughter in aquaculture. In this paper we’ll focus on farming of wild fish as it is a growing business and has the potential to solve some of these ethical issues, but also raises both old and new concerns. A number of advantages can be seen for the producers in terms of better prediction of the production levels compared with wild catch - increased price control, choice of target species to meet consumer demands, etc. Environmental advantages compared to wild catch are no by-catch and less fuel used – given the feed is not based on wild catch, or by-catch is used as feed. Also, wild fish can suffer from low welfare in terms of malnutrition and could benefit from being fed and being protected from predators. However, some ethical issues remain, e.g. the livelihood of the fishermen, societal perception of fish welfare, feeding with living prey and the sustainability of feed. Thus, this paper highlight some of the important ethical challenges to a new aquaculture practice.

U2 - 10.3920/978-90-8686-892-6_37

DO - 10.3920/978-90-8686-892-6_37

M3 - Article in proceedings

SN - 978-90-8686-341-9

SP - 267

EP - 272

BT - Sustainable governance and management of food systems

A2 - Vinnari, Eija

A2 - Vinnari, Markus

PB - Wageningen Academic Publishers

T2 - Congress of the European Society for Agricultural and Food Ethics

Y2 - 18 September 2019 through 21 September 2019

ER -