What is wrong with eating fish?
Restored from the Empower Network archive (2011–2017), lightly edited to meet our current advertising standards. Views are the original author’s.
Fish has a very special place from all animal foods. The reasons for that is because fish is low in cholesterol, it’s got Omega 3 oils and acids and the popular belief is that fish is healthy.
When you decide to become vegan you exclude fish of your diet and the other sea foods.Above all when you go to buy fish you are buying a product and like any product is made for profit. Most people see the nice packaging and read “wild Atlantic salmon” or whatever . The marketing is working on you. Here are some facts to consider what is wrong with fish.
Fish absorbs and intensely concentrate toxins like PCB ( highly toxic industrial compounds harmful to humans) , radioactive substances and heavy metal like mercury, lead, cadmium and arsenic. All of those are linked to cancer as well as nervous system disorders , kidney damage and impaired mental functioning. As well as giving the humans all these toxins , the seafood industry causes an enormous damage to the marine ecosystems .
Factory farming of fish and shellfish is a large industry. Between 30 and 40 % of all worldwide saltwater and freshwater seafood comes from commercial fish farms.Fish accumulate toxins from the water through gill breathing and large amounts of antibiotics are routinely used , not only to un-naturally spur growth, but also to control the disease that is ever present in the pond.The farming also involves inhumane and unhealthy overcrowding of the fish, usually in offshore pens.Scotland’s caged salmon for example creates an amount of untreated waste equivalent to that from 8 million people, far more than Scotland’s population. This have a devastated effect on ocean fisheries because it takes 3-5 ponds of wild ocean fish to produce 1 pound of farmed saltwater fish .An amazing amount of 50% of the world fish catch is fed to the needlessly imprisoned fish and not to people.That means that close to the shore are not many fish left.
With all that going on there is an enormous number of sea creatures that have been cached and and they are the “un-profitable ” so called “bycatch”-certain fish, turtles, dolphines, sea birds and other animals. Those animals once cougth are thrown back into the ocean mostly dead or severely wonded. Every year this adds up to about 25 million tons of dead and dying sea animals, which is about the third of the all catch.
One of the most ironic facts is that over a 50 pounds of fish meal is needed to raise one farm raised salmon. Many other creatures suffer directly from the un-natural demand for fish. Sea lions, seals, whales, dolphins and sea birds suffer because their source of food has been destroyed.One European fishing vessel of the coast of West Africa can take as much in one month as 7000 local fisher men in a year. Those are places, where people rely on fish to survive , but their chances go lower and lower .
Whereas records are kept of the number of individual birds and mammals killed each year for food for “seafood” only tonnage is reported -80 million tons of water creatures per year. Who knows how many individuals is that. Each fish is a vertebrate with a central nervous system and pain proprioceptors like we mammals have. Marine biologist have proven, that fish do feel pain and that it would do anything to avoid it even if it has to starve. Fish are sensitive and intelligent creatures and their flesh , filled with pain , fear and toxins is very unhealthy for humans.In eating fish you eat the lactic acid the fish produce in their death throes, and the fear induced adrenalin and other hormones.
All the things that you are programmed to think , that you can get only from fish are available from plant sources.Here are the main sources of the vital the omega-3 fatty acids are flax seeds , walnuts, hemp oil, dark greens and seaweeds.
Sending blessings and love