Is a fish diet more ethical than plant based diet?

Ohad

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I’m sorry for writing so much. This topic is important to me so I couldn’t shorten it. Please read until the end, i bet you won’t regret it at all!
in the last thread, I figured out that I was not clear enough, so I’m posting this new thread because I really want to reach the truth. This was the last thread: EU - Consuming fish is more ethical than eating plants

What I said was:
given that vegan food production harms insects and rodents(by its production process)- the production process of cows and chickens is probably even more harmful to those insects(because chickens and cows are fed with vegan food). however, if we pay on fish murder, we do not necessarily pay for plant food production(because some fishes are drugged out of the ocean and are not fed up with vegan corps). its even safe to assume the more animals are killed for vegan food the killed for plants.
please help me find the truth about this. ive been really strugling with it.
People didn’t get it right in that thread, so I want to make this clear now: I hate animal abuse just as much as everybody else in this forum does, and I do not tolerate excuses. This is not an excuse, but a genuine ethical concern that has harmed my animal right activism(that’s right, I am a new activist). My ideal form of activism has been driven by my absolute hatred for the exploiting industries, and by my certainty that it is wrong, in every way , shape and form.
And another thing- I am not talking about a regular carnivorous diet(animal flesh, cheese, milk, honey and eggs), I am talking about a diet that includes only vegans stuff, and marine animals that we don’t feed with crop- Because vegan food production harms mammals, rodents and insects(and it’s not a troll, I truly care about insects because they obviously can feel). Keep in mind I’m not talking about cows for example or any other animals that we do feed with crops. I’m talking about marine animals that we just drag out of the ocean and kill them on the spot, without giving them any food.
And if you still think I should just ignore my ethical concern, keep in mind that the process of ignoring such ethical concerns- is the very reason why people do bad things and also don’t go vegan, therefore I refuse just letting it go.


the single legit claim that was brought up last thread was: fishing causes dropping garbage in the sea, and also sea pollution which also harms third side animals. However- I’m not sure that fishing harms animals less than vegan food production. But for now, It actually makes more sense to me that the crop process harms animals the most(because seriously- ants and insects must be huge in number where they grow the vegan stuff). This is the only argument I know of, that veganism might not completely destroy that easily, or not at all. It genuinely freaks me out because I used to think that veganism can destroy any single claim for animal eating, in terms of pure ethics, and pure objectivism.

the other claim that was brought up was that an avarage fish we kill also eats let’s say 5 times his weight. This claim is genuine but irrelevant, since unlike factory farmed animals, we do not make fish pregnant(don’t make them give births). Therefore, the quantity of the animals the fish eat is not increased by our consumption, unlike cows for example(that we rape to give birth).

I want to clarify one more thing: don’t get me wrong- I still think veganism is overall better that the avarage carnivorous diet, no matter if eating fish is less harmful, because the avarage carnivorous diet is really also includes a lot of factory farmed animals, and also factory farmed fish.

a huge thanks to the people who read it so far. It’s really important to me. So if you got any useful piece of information about it, please let me know. I just wanna know for sure what is harmful the most- non factory farmed fish or vegan food. And please don’t bring up the assumption that indirect/unintentional killing is less bad than intentional, because I’m an educated vegan- I’m pretty aware about the consequences of my food choices. I am not ready to use the “unintentional assumption” as an excuse to not care about the objective suffering count of my choices.
 
I am not ready to use the “unintentional assumption” as an excuse to not care about the objective suffering count of my choices.
Why the heck not??

First point I would like to reiterate is that the amount of harm done to animals thru plant agriculture is less than most people assume. I already mentioned the radio tagged mice. well we don't radio tag insects but you have to assume that they too can run Away from the slow moving machinery . *

The second point I want to reiterate is that animals killed in plant agriculture are mostly inadvertent. And not to confuse the issue buy your grocer kills animals on purpose. your gorceries need to be protected from vermin. Its pretty much impossible to go thru life without causing some animal death. But we can all strive to minimize animal destruction.

The Vegans Society's definition of vegan nicely sidesteps this whole issue. Vegans just strive to avoid animal exploitation. it even has a caveat: as far as is possible and practicable.

Also from the Vegan Society
There are many ways to embrace vegan living. Yet one thing all vegans have in common is a plant-based diet avoiding all animal foods such as meat (including fish, shellfish and insects), dairy, eggs and honey - as well as avoiding animal-derived materials, products tested on animals and places that use animals for entertainment.​


So fishing and eating fish are not vegan.

I guess you are still concerned that harvesting plant food is more harmful than harvesting fish.
I guess you must be thinking that killing one fish is better than the harm done to all the animals that are harmed by animal agriculture.

But if your mortal mathematics include all the side effects or plant agriculture it would only be fair to include all the side effects of the fishing industry.

Besides overfishing, there is habitat destruction, derelict fishing gear, and bycatch.

* Another thing is that I've seen the machines that harvest spring greens and baby spinach. they are designed to reduce the destruction of animals and insects as much as possible. and there are also lots of crops that are still harvested by hand.
 
@Ohad --You say you are informed, but it doesn't take much research to realize the harm, both environmentally, and done to wildlife outside of the intended catch.
I suppose you could argue that "ideally" fishing could be better, but that's a lame argument, as it isn't better.
We're not talking some people on a remote island who supplement their diet by fishing with spears or even by their own hands, you're arguing that pescatarians relying on commercial fishing does less harm than strict vegetarians.

If you try and say people should only purchase ethically sourced fish--how is that different than ethically run farm systems? Farming doesnt' have to involve land, so why not argue that as preferable rather than the killing of fish,and destruction of the environment? Not to mention the sea birds and reptiles fishing kills.

 
Apparently it's un updated version of the original one.
It's not though. The OP thinks people misunderstood the first post, but it seems rather that he misunderstood the responses, which are the same here.
Maybe just delete the first?
 
This fails simply due to not enough to feed the world.

So ridiculous proposal.

Non intentional harm matters.

This would be deliberate murders
 
Fish are thought to be capable of pain, feelings and sentience. So we shouldn't kill them or cause them to suffer.

Directly killing seems worse than the killing of insects from plant food which happens by accident so is less morally relevant, plus there is little evidence that many animals really are killed by plant food growth.

Wild fish suffer quite badly when they are caught. The way they die is worse and more prolonged than farmed land animals (who live a worse life but have a quicker death).

Also, we are over fishing so much that the oceans are running out of fish. The problem is so severe that no fish makes more sense than less fish. The situation is completely out of control.

With a cow, you only have to kill 1 creature to feed 100 people (not that I am in favour of doing such a thing, certainly I am not). But, each time you eat fish you have killed 1 whole creature, in fact it´s worse than that, because of bycatch. Bycatch probably causes more death than accidental death in fields for growing plant foods.

So for these reasons I recommend you exclude fish from your diet.

Best wishes.

PS Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer is the book I read that had the longest section on fish farming.
 
Another aspect of the effect of fishing that hasn't been mentioned yet are the other animals that eat fish to survive. Other fish, seals, birds, bears, whales, all eat fish, and with all the over fishing they are left with little to eat.
In one overfished area, fishermen are killing any seals they see because they are passing the blame to the seals for the lack of fish.
 
I just wanna know for sure what is harmful the most- non factory farmed fish or vegan food.

You aren't going to know for sure. There isn't a quantitative solution here. Don't compromise your principles on a guess.

Buying fish directly funds industries focused on killing animals for profit. Eating fish normalizes killing animals for food.

I think you've gotten plenty of thoughtful replies to make up your mind. If you're still struggling with this it's either an immature clinging to a need for certainty that doesn't exist, or attention-seeking contrarianism.
 
Several of my friends are catch-and-release fishers and of course think it's perfectly humane. They were recently talking about techniques for removing a hook when they accidentally get one embedded in themselves...obviously you want to minimize pain or further damage. I asked which of those techniques they use for removing a hook from a fish...awkward silence, then they admitted they just yank it out.

It's strange how otherwise good people can be so willfully ignorant of the suffering they inflict.
 
Several of my friends are catch-and-release fishers and of course think it's perfectly humane. They were recently talking about techniques for removing a hook when they accidentally get one embedded in themselves...obviously you want to minimize pain or further damage. I asked which of those techniques they use for removing a hook from a fish...awkward silence, then they admitted they just yank it out.

It's strange how otherwise good people can be so willfully ignorant of the suffering they inflict.
.
I don't think it's so strange. It's how most of us used to be, before we became veg.
 
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I guess it is hard to be sure about what is best to do in some cases. In regard to sea creatures, I think that buying commercially caught fish is contributing to an unsustainable and very harmful industry. I'm not sure about the numbers argument, not having researched commercial fishing and fish farming in much detail, but taken overall and including plants grown to feed fish (and hence insect deaths), the numbers of animals harmed by fishing must be astronomical. As I don't think insects are sentient enough for us to worry about, I wouldn't be bothered by that comparison. I think the harm from commercial fishing is extreme.

On the other hand, I think there may be an argument for catching fish to eat yourself when compared to animals killed in crop farming, but I haven't sat down to work it out. People come up with all sorts of numbers for deaths in cropping but it is, I suspect, far less than is commonly suggested. After reading a lot of references, I think an averaged number across all the crops grown for human food might be around 10-20 per hectare per year. It may be higher in broadacre crops such as we'd eat to replace meat, eg lentils, beans, soy etc. The higest estimate I have seen is 114 per hecare. Averaged out, to replace all the meat and dairy in someone's typical Western diet would require around .1 to .2 of a hectare per year. If animals killed are 20 per hectare, your share of those deaths for plant food to replace animal based foods might be as little as 4 or 5 animals in a year. If it is as many as 114 per hectare then your share might be as high as 25 animals.

On that basis, it seems hard to argue that catching and killing fish for food would be better. Unless you keep it down to just a few per year which hardly seems worth it. Better to go hunt down a deer.

On the other hand, If you want to include insects killed in commercial cropping then almost certainly you are better to catch your own fish. Or raise your own chickens. But I still think it doesn't make sense to compare insects to fish or chickens. Vegans who do are in a bit of a moral bind if they don't consider some meat in their diet, I reckon (eg oysters, mussels, own caught fish, etc).

I see some commenters claiming that exploitation is the key here. I don't know, what is exploitation? Is it using an animal's lifecycle to produce something for us (eg wool)? I would say yes to that. Is it killing pest animals to grow crops? I would say no. Is it exploitation to kill an animal directly for food? Again, I don't think so. But a rather more benign interpretation of exploitation is the use of any resources for one's own benefit, so perhaps it does count for something. I still think that just leads us back to the problem of numbers if we want to count animals killed to produce crops.
 
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The best we can do, if we can do it, is growing our own vegetation for fruits and vegetables, and if we can, nuts and grains, for ourselves, along with those with it. There could be the least harm, and the most sustainability, the more we do that.

Fish, with feelings they certainly have, do not need to be a part of that, and it is not sustainable to have them as fish are rapidly being used up from this world.
 
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Everything you consume comes at the cost of another life form. If you're going to start worrying about insects or rodents in an agricultural field, you might as well start worrying about every step you take or every time you drive your car or use public transportation, or use a vacuum, or a broom, or about the microbes in the air and in your gut, and then you might as well crawl into a hole and try to survive on oxygen. I live in a community where almost everyone but me fishes and hunts. There are certainly bad apples around, but the friends of mine who fish and hunt are conscientious and use what they kill for much of their food. I have no desire to do these things, but I respect how they live. They are not the problem. If humankind had always only fished and hunted the way they do, without any factory farming, the problems with over fishing and other animal exploitation wouldn't exist, though it's still obviously torturous for any animal they kill. Still, I view them as part of nature, no different than any other predator, no different than any member of a hunter/gatherer society.

Unfortunately, so many who fish and hunt do so irresponsibly. I used to see it all the time when I used to hunt myself as a lad: drunks and mindless men using the earth and its inhabitants as if every life form -- both flora and fauna -- was a slave to them, something to abuse for their enjoyment, something to use as a prop to build up their ego under a false facade of machismo.

I'll never forget the seagull I saw on a beach in Chicago caught in a fishing lure. It was one of those tube lures with hooks on each end of the tube. The bird had one end of the lure caught in its beak, and the other end of the lure caught in the webbing of its foot. It had obviously stepped on it trying to free the lure from its beak. It was horrible to see. Whenever I tried to get close, hoping I could help, it would fly off. It couldn't go far, but it eventually took off far enough to land in the water, where it probably drowned or starved. Made me sick to see it. I hate those lures and wish they could be eliminated. They're unnecessary. Anyway, just one example of irresponsibility, though even conscientious fisherman are going to lose their share of hooks, creating a situation where some bird or other animal is going to suffer.
 
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If you're going to start worrying about insects or rodents in an agricultural field, you might as well start worrying about every step you take or every time you drive your car or use public transportation, or use a vacuum, or a broom
Funnily enough, I do. I suspect many people do, though perhaps most don't. I watch where I am walking as much as possible to avoid insects and caterpillars. I remove ants, spiders and so on when I vacuum or whatever. Weirdly enough I even move ants very carefully when wiping down surfaces in the house. You are right we cannot avoid ever causing harm so of course driving my car will result in harms. But, where I can, I do what I can.

The fact that some people hunt and fish irresponsibly doesn't mean that sourcing your own food is morally reprehensible, so I agree with your summation of your friends.
 
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