Meatonomics

by David Robinson Simon

  Down on the Fish Farm

  The recent research into fish and pain leads some to conclude that fish farming, the fastest-growing segment of animal agriculture, is one of the least humane of all processes to produce animal food. Farmed fish suffer routinely both during their lives and when slaughtered. As one would expect from any profit-minded fish farmer, tight stocking densities are used in typical farms to help keep costs down. But it's a hard-knock life for the fish since tight densities cause them chronic stress and make it impossible to engage in natural behaviors like defending territory or escaping from bullies. One group of researchers found that “the aquaculture environment is inherently unsuitable for fish that are territorial or solitary animals in their natural environment, such as some salmonid fish [salmon and trout]. In these cases, agonistic interactions can be particularly stressful to the fish.”13

  Packed stocking densities also cause fish a variety of physical problems. Injuries to tails and fins are common because of aggression-induced cannibalism and frequent friction with cages and other fish. Tightly packed fish are highly susceptible to eye diseases leading to cataracts and blindness, a problem pervasive enough to merit the formation of a group called Friends of Blind Fishes.14 One research team even worried that the prevalence of blindness among farmed fish might give consumers “doubts on the ethical standards of industrial fish farming.”15

  These overcrowded containers can also give rise to parasitic infestations. In the case of salmon, there are various techniques for dealing with sea lice—none of which is completely effective and all of which have their own welfare implications. One is to douse infested salmon with a chemical like hydrogen peroxide. Because such chemicals are harsh skin irritants, they cause the fish to exhibit stress behaviors for days after treatment.16 Another technique is to introduce helper fish called wrasse as cleaners to pluck the parasites from their hosts. However, in such close confinement, the wrasse are often bullied or killed by the salmon, and in any event, they're killed by farm workers at the end of the season to prevent the spread of disease to the next batch of salmon.

  Slowly consuming their hosts, sea lice cause lesions, bleeding, and sometimes death. As one would expect, salmon don't enjoy being eaten alive; research shows those infected with sea lice suffer from chronic stress and compromised immune systems.17 Sometimes the parasites eat all the way down to bone. When this happens on a fish's head, farm workers call the grisly result a “death crown.”

  Fish Kill, the Farm Way

  When ready for slaughter, farmed fish are killed in profit-focused ways that many commentators deem inhumane. For starters, farmed fish are often starved for a week or more before slaughter to eliminate fecal matter from their intestines and make it easier to butcher them. While any sentient being presumably dislikes being starved, for fish conditioned to being fed at the same time every day, research finds this sudden disruption in their feeding schedule is particularly stressful.18

  One common method of killing fish is to throw them in water rich in carbon dioxide. Placed into this acidic, low-oxygen environment, fish thrash around for half a minute or more, and even after calming down, continue to show signs of distress, such as vigorous head and tail shaking, for up to nine minutes.19 Fish killed in this manner routinely bleed from the gills because of the intensity of their reaction.20

  Another popular slaughter technique at fish farms is to bleed the animals while they're fully conscious. This might involve cutting open their gills, opening their bellies with a knife, or some other method developed for a particular species. It's unclear whether we need research to determine that it hurts animals to have their bodies cut open while fully conscious, but regardless, the research has been done. Here's what the scientists found: if not stunned first, fish feel pain when bled to death.21 In fact, those eviscerated or degilled while conscious struggle “intensely” for four to seven minutes and respond to stimuli for up to fifteen minutes.22

  For greater freshness and salability, many farmers like their fish to freeze while dying. Gradually slowing a dying animal's metabolism helps to minimize tissue decomposition and preserve its taste. Because fish asphyxiate at a slower rate when ambient temperatures are lower, chilling can lengthen the suffocation process by seven minutes or more.23 Not surprisingly, being frozen to death is distressful to the animals. Research measuring levels of the stress hormone cortisol in fish found that these levels increase markedly when the animals' ambient water is chilled.24

  Why Consider Fish?

  In the world of animal foods, fish are an anomaly—an outlier. For one thing, fish differ from land animals in their inability to cry out when hurt or suffering. This powerlessness to vocalize leads many to confuse a dying fish's silence with a lack of suffering—although the research shows otherwise. And then there is the conventional wisdom that says fish are particularly nutritious. But a flotilla of scientific papers shows that fish are routinely high in mercury, PCBs, and cholesterol, making them a distinctly unhealthy alternative to plant foods (see Appendix A).

  Nutritional issues aside, this chapter centers on the humane issues facing fish because marine animals frequently take a backseat to land animals—and because the recent research in this area is particularly compelling. Of course, cattle, pigs, and poultry have their own set of humane problems, like gestation crates for pigs, battery cages for laying hens, zero-grazing systems for dairy cows, and rapid growth and hyper-confinement for broiler chickens (as mentioned, more on that in Appendix D).

  Measuring Cruelty's Costs to People

  Given the chance, what—if anything—would you pay to change animal food production practices that are particularly inhumane? Economists Norwood and Lusk have sought to answer this question through studies involving real people and real money, and the answers are enlightening. In auctions where participants used their own cash to bid on animal welfare improvements, people paid an average of $57 per person to actually move one thousand laying hens from caged to free-range systems.25 Bidders also spent an average of $23 per person to actually move one thousand sows and their offspring to shelter-pasture systems from confinement crates. Even more interesting for our purposes, Norwood and Lusk extrapolated from their auction results to estimate that people would spend a one-time average of $342 and $345 per person, respectively, to implement these two welfare changes throughout the United States.26

  Now I propose to extrapolate further. Let's add three more hypothetical changes in animal farming to the two above: ending zero grazing for dairy cows, eliminating rapid growth and hyper-confinement for broiler chickens, and banning overstocking and inhumane slaughter of farmed fish. In terms of the number of animals affected, these five items likely represent the most prevalent industry practices in need of reform. Take $343.31, the midpoint of the range between the two amounts Norwood and Lusk estimated people would pay to improve hen's and pig's lives, and apply it to all the hypothetical changes. The total that this exercise suggests each American would be willing to pay, on average, to make these five changes is $1,717.27 Adjusting this figure for inflation, multiplying by the number of US adults, then amortizing the total over twenty years (the standard IRS depreciation period for farm buildings) yields a total of roughly $20.7 billion yearly that farm animal cruelty imposes on Americans in externalized costs.28

  Some will argue this figure is too high because not everyone would pay nearly $2,000 to improve the lives of fish and farm animals. That's true, but this figure is proposed as an average that puts us in the right vicinity. Some would spend nothing, while at the other extreme, some would spend $50,000 or $100,000. How much might billionaire casino owner and vegan Steve Wynn pay? Five million dollars? Fifty million?

  In fact, if anything, I believe this cruelty number is too low. For starters, it excludes the amounts the animals themselves would be willing to pay—if this could be measured and conventional economics ascribed any value to it. Measuring animals' economic preferences is not all that far-fetched. One study actually measure
d pigs' willingness to pay for certain items. The animals were taught to repeatedly press a nose-plate to receive either food or increased social contact. By a ratio of 2:1, the pigs demonstrated they were more willing to spend time and effort on food than on friendship.29

  Of course, if we could assign a value to animals' willingness to pay for better conditions, it would nevertheless go unrecognized by economic standards that measure only the human value of goods and services. Some believe this omission represents a deficiency in conventional economics. As methods improve for measuring animals' willingness to pay, and humans become more comfortable with the idea of using such figures, better metrics may emerge for making these calculations. Is it possible to measure the economic effects of producing animal foods without accounting for a single penny of economic cost associated with the individual animals' personal suffering? Because many of the 60 billion land and marine animals killed to feed Americans each year suffer throughout their lives, and some suffer further at the time of slaughter—in each case in measurable ways—perhaps assessments based on conventional economics omit a material component.

  Furthermore, the estimate of $20.7 billion yearly covers only five inhumane practices. It doesn't include numerous others, like raising veal calves in crates, force-feeding ducks to produce foie gras, castrating pigs and cattle without anesthetic, and killing male chicks by starvation, suffocation, or grinding. Adding these and other practices to the calculation might double or triple the total.

  What Now?

  The living conditions discussed in this chapter and Appendix D might seem apocryphal, exceptional, or illegal. They're not. They're the normal, lawful, day-to-day conditions that industrially raised animals routinely face. For some, these images may suggest a need for change.

  Want to have an immediate impact? Here's one idea: stop eating eggs and products made with eggs. Laying hens have it tough regardless of whether they're squeezed into battery cages, stuffed into enriched cages, or crammed into so-called cage-free buildings at unregulated densities. For a bird subjected to a painful debeaking, starved on a regular basis, and bled to death—while alert—eight years before her time, the differences between one kind of cramped living quarters and another are largely inconsequential. Besides, there's little to suggest that eggs are good for you and much to suggest they're not (see Appendix A). Giving them up will likely lower your cholesterol and could help prevent or reverse heart disease.

  If you like eggs for breakfast, try a grilled tofu patty as a fried egg alternative—or a tofu scramble instead of scrambled eggs. For baking, try replacing eggs with banana, applesauce, or a commercial starch-based egg replacer. With these and other plant-based egg substitutes widely available, today it's easier to give up eggs than ever before.

  Food for Thought

  Science has rejected the once-popular Cartesian view that animals don't feel pain or suffer. Today, we know that all animals raised or caught for food, including fish, feel pain, fear, and stress.

  In industrial animal production facilities, where virtually all US animal foods originate, animals are routinely subjected to pain and stress throughout their lives—and often at the moment of their deaths. The biggest problem in fish and factory farms is lifelong hyper-confinement and, for most animals, an almost complete inability to engage in natural behaviors. Routine, unanesthetized amputations of animals' body parts, including debeaking, castration, and tail docking, provide additional sources of pain and stress.

  Americans are overwhelmingly concerned about these practices and willing to pay to end them. Live auction research using real dollars suggests Americans would be willing to pay an average of $1,700 per person to end the most egregious of these practices. But until these practices are stopped, animal food producers will continue to impose an estimated $20.7 billion annually in externalized cruelty costs on US consumers.

  9

  Fishing Follies

  One brilliant Alaskan day a few summers ago, I was sizing up the Kenai River and thinking about putting my kayak in the chilly water. I had driven up from California, paddling some of North America's great rivers along the way—the Skagit in Washington, the Bow in Alberta, and the same Yukon stretch that Jack London worked as a guide during the gold rush. But I hadn't seen anything like this in my travels. It was salmon season, and the fish were running. At the river's wide mouth, where the silty, gray waters emptied into the Pacific Ocean's Cook Inlet, the banks and shallows of the lower Kenai were lined with anglers by the score.

  Salmon can be taken in that part of the river only by hand or net. And since most people lack the hand size or speed of a bear's paw, they use a hoop net—a nine-foot pole attached to a huge, netted bag. While I watched, people of all skill levels and walks of life yanked glinting king salmon from the water with little effort. Further upstream, where the water narrows, the spruces and willows grow denser, and people aren't allowed to fish, I would later see eagles and grizzly bears enjoying their share of the bounty. The regular glimpses of salmon being taken by people and animals suggested abundance almost without limits.

  During its ocean phase, the royalty of the salmon family sports a sparkling silver coat with areas of blue-green or purple on its back. Once known as June Hogs because of their size and the seasonality of their runs, king salmon routinely used to weigh 80 to 100 pounds as adults and grow to five feet or more in length. But today, kings are lucky to reach half that size. As I later learned, the scenes that I mistook for the animal's abundance in Alaska were in fact images of decline. In fact, the king salmon fishery, like so many others on the planet, is in distress. The annual Alaskan catch of king salmon has fallen by half in the past several decades, and the numbers are even worse in Washington, Oregon, and California.

  Beyond the obvious reason for this decline—overfishing—there are additional causes whose connections are harder to fathom. Salmon hatcheries, for example, are intended to help wild salmon populations. So why do hatcheries wind up harming the very species they're trying to help? The answers lie in the supply-driven pressures of meatonomics—which maybe, just for this chapter, we'll call “fishonomics.” In the pages below, I explore these and other questions and suggest solutions to some of fishing's pressing economic problems. It should come as little surprise that these problems are largely about the money—that is, the desire of those who fish industrially or operate commercial fish farms to maximize their profits.

  Incidental Taking

  It's instructive to look at another marine animal whose numbers, like those of salmon, are shrinking: the leatherback turtle. The planet's fastest reptile, and the largest one after crocodiles, the leatherback has a ridged back and looks like an art deco spaceship in miniature. This prehistoric creature can grow to nearly ten feet, swim 20 miles per hour, migrate six thousand miles, and dive almost a mile. It's also unique among turtles for its lack of a bony shell, instead sporting a carapace of firm, rubbery skin.

  Leatherbacks debuted in the Cretaceous period and have been around for 110 million years. But if things continue as they have for the past few decades, this century could be their last. Leatherback populations have fallen by as much as 95 percent in the past twenty years, and the species is now listed as critically endangered under the Endangered Species Act and international treaties.1 These laws prohibit killing leatherbacks or selling their body parts. Yet despite this protection, tens of thousands of leatherbacks and other threatened or endangered sea turtles are legally killed yearly.

  The loophole is a provision that permits what's known as incidental taking. This exception allows fishing enterprises that follow certain guidelines to lawfully kill endangered animals in the normal course of fishing. In federal waters, for example, shrimp trawlers can kill endangered turtles with impunity while fishing—provided they've installed a turtle excluding device (TED) in their nets, which theoretically allows turtles to escape. However, TEDs aren't perfect, and they often fail to save turtles' lives.2 What's more, the use of TEDs is not monitored or enf
orced well in foreign waters, and they are not even required in many US state waters. Thus, in the Gulf of Mexico, where TEDs are not required, fishing activities in 2010 and 2011 led to an eightfold increase in sea turtle deaths over prior years.3 “One of the greatest threats to sea turtle populations,” notes the UN, “is capture in fishing gear.”4

  This massive collateral damage is a consequence of the fish industry's counterpart to land-based CAFOs: factory fishing. Today, more than twenty-three thousand factory ships weighing 100 tons or more patrol the world's oceans, typically staying at sea for weeks at a time and catching and processing huge quantities of fish.5 Two of the most common industrial fishing methods, trawling and longlining, are also among the least discriminate. Trawlers drag a large, open-mouthed net that catches everything in its path. Longliners, by comparison, pull a length of individually baited hooks that trail for fifty miles or more behind the ship, enticing any hungry animal in the vicinity to take a fatal bite. Like trawl nets, longlines snare considerable amounts of unintended haul, or bycatch.

  While some countries prohibit discards of certain species, the overwhelming practice is to throw back bycatch dead.6 Thus, in most of the world's oceans, where little attention is paid to bycatch, factory fishing spells trouble for every fish, bird, mammal, or reptile unlucky enough to make contact with the juggernaut of nets or hooks that trail behind ships. Besides endangered turtles, other rare or threatened animals like dolphins and seabirds often die in a net or on a line. The albatross is one of the planet's most threatened creatures, with seventeen of twenty-two albatross species considered vulnerable, endangered, or critically endangered under international standards (the other five are labeled “near endangered”).7 One study counted at least forty-four thousand fishing-related albatross deaths in southern oceans each year, with researchers concluding that longlining was causing “serious declines in albatross populations.”8