# How do you feel about farm raised fish?



## TechAdmin

I'm watching the news the other night and they did a report about the advantages of farm raised fish, particularly cat fish. They said that the feed them mainly corn so that they have a higher nutritional content and it keeps them gfrom bottom feeding. Any body have any thoughts on this? It seems that a higher nutritional content would be a good thing. Are there any canning recipes for fish that aren't straight pickling? I pickled some store bought haring and it's good but I'm ready for something else.


----------



## Canadian

We need to boost food production to meet world demand. Farming makes sense but I'd rather have wild or "free range" meat than other methods. I've never heard of "mad salmon disease" but I'm sure some other form of contamination can take place from having too many fisher in too small a place.


----------



## Expeditioner

I would think that proper harvesting would help keep the pond capacity within reason. Would be a good idea to build an overflow pond or two. Used to work in a hatchery years ago...its a lot different then raising the fish to market though.


----------



## dukman

Does the change in diet affect the Omega-3 fatty acids we keep hearing so much about? If they are supposed to be so good for you, but diminish due to the change in diet, I will stick to free range. Plus you get the added factor of "survival of the fittest". The ones that survive to market are because they survived the open waters and predators.


----------



## NaeKid

It sounds like the argument between hunting for food (deer, elk, etc) and buying your food (cow, pig, etc) has moved over the the sea-food realm. Personally, as long as my food isn't pumped full of hormones and stuff - I don't really care where the food comes from as long as it tastes good :2thumb:


----------



## The_Blob

Canadian said:


> I've never heard of "mad salmon disease" but I'm sure some other form of contamination can take place from having too many fish in too small a place.


There needs to be more controls on what farm-raised are fed, currently the fish are not fed for 3 days before harvesting, so presumably the risk is minimized of feed-borne mammalian diseases.
Scientists are worried that people who eat farmed fish that are *fed cattle byproducts* could get mad cow disease, according to an article in the new issue of the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease. The human form of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE or mad cow disease) is known as Creutzfeldt Jakob disease. It is untreatable and always fatal. 
Most nations have outlawed feeding cattle byproducts to other cattle because the disease spreads easily within the same species. But neurologist Dr. Robert P. Friedland of the University of Louisville in Kentucky also wants the government to ban feeding cow meat or bone meal to farm-raised fish until the safety of this widespread practice can be established. 
Friedland and his colleagues contend that it is theoretically possible for a disease to spread if someone eats a carrier (such as a farm-raised fish) that is not infected but might be carrying disease-causing elements from an infected animal. "The fact that no cases of Creutzfeldt Jakob disease have been linked to eating farmed fish does not assure that feeding rendered cow parts to fish is safe," Friedland said. "The incubation period of these diseases may last for decades, which makes the association between feeding practices and infection difficult. Enhanced safeguards need to be put in place to protect the public." 
In the United Kingdom, 163 deaths from Creutzfeldt Jakob disease have been linked to eating beef infected with mad cow disease. In Canada, the disease has been found in nine cows, and in the United States, three.

on another note...

Michigan Messenger » Hard times drive more Michiganders to fish for food


----------



## The_Blob

Dean said:


> They said that the feed them mainly corn so that they have a higher nutritional content and it keeps them from bottom feeding.


catfish generally are predatory in the wild, they will take an easy 'scavenged' meal of a dead fish on the bottom, but they are 'bottom feeders' only in the sense that their main prey (crayfish) are on the bottom.


----------



## The_Blob

Canadian said:


> We need to boost food production to meet world demand. Farming makes sense but I'd rather have wild or "free range" meat than other methods.


fish farming IS the future, because very very soon there will be very few 'wild' fish  it is a sustainable model for a high-nutrition food source

many 'farm raised' fish (tilapia, cod) are superior in every nutritional/cullinary way (taste, texture, vitamins etc etc)

a fish farm is generally not a pond (but it can be) but a netted off area in a larger body of water like a lake or bay


----------



## rwc1969

I don't see any long term good coming from fish farming, but we all need to make money somehow.


----------



## The_Blob

rwc1969 said:


> I don't see any long term good coming from fish farming, but we all need to make money somehow.


not trying to start a flame-war... but do you KNOW anything about fish farming? it's *not* only about making money, it's about actually *having* fish to eat in 50 years.

like many things, it can be done a right way (sustainably) & a wrong way (cost-cutting, shortcuts, etc etc), and like many things there are risks, but the can be minimized greatly with due diligence


----------



## rwc1969

I know that fish farming, aquaculture, is what led to the release of Asian carp into the Missisippi river and from there to just about everywhere else upstream. That's not the only negative thing that has been caused by fish farming, but is probably the most detrimental to date.

Fish farming is well on it's way to wiping out the largest freshwater fishery in the world. The Great Lakes!

The carp are killing off everything. Although, in 50 years we'll still have fish, but they'll all be asian carp. Our waterways will be polluted with toxic blue-green algae and you won't be able to eat the carp because they will be toxic with stored high concentrations of the algae themselves.

Any large scale farming is detrimental to our long term survival and unsustainable. Fish farming has nothing to do with sustainable harvest or permaculture. Feeding fish a nearly 100% corn diet is just as un-natural as feeding cows corn.

I don't know how someone thinks they can control or reduce the risks associated with fish farming when you consider the potential for flooding, leaching of water, or animals and birds carrying disease and invasive foreign species from these farms to our natural waterways. 

Heck, you yourself said that many fish farms are merely netted in areas of a larger natural body of water. How would you suppose these fish farmers keep the threat of diseases and invasive species from entering the ecosystem when the only thing seperating the farm from the natural waterway is a net?

I don't eat, and never will eat farm raised fish. Nasty! The OP asked what people thought about fish farming. That's what myself and many others think about it. Fish farming is bad news.

Fish farming is only about making money and has nothing to do with having fish in 50 years. If fish are gonna live in your netted in fish farm they're gonna live on the other side of the net too. Duh!

Farmed fish do not have higher nutritional content nor do they taste better. Generally speaking their flesh is mushy, pale and lacks flavor when compared to their wild relatives. Many fish farms are in enclosed ponds that were dug out of old farm fields. Farm fields that are loaded with toxic chemicals that easily absorb into the bodies of fish. These chemicals are then transferred to you , myself and our children. Fish farms enhance this effect because the fish are concentrated into an area which is constantly being stirred up by all the frenzied activity of the fish feeding on corn. What about the corn that sinks, fish don't eat that?

C'mon, trying to justify fish farming as a sustainable and acceptable form of anything is a joke.:usaflag:


----------



## The_Blob

pretty much like ANYTHING our generally entitlement-minded, fast-food-economy, lazy culture absolutely refuses to take responsibility for if they can goto the quickie-mart and get it prepackaged. (NOT talking about people with a mindset to be on this site of course...  )

When I think of aquaculture I try to think of it in a utopian sense that people will be 'stewards of the land (water?)' like many on this site are. Unfortunately, that is not the case for many reasons (most of which I *do* blame on the consumer themselves, as the primary control; let's face it, if people don't buy then a product gets changed or discontinued), but I cantell you from personal experience that there ARE fishfarms that ARE responsible & don't feed their stock cheap crap that makes them just another higher-concentrations-of-PCBs statistic, and who's product has quality maybe not superior to but comparitively close to the wild.


----------



## Jason

The same argument happens all the time about beef, trees, you name it. You guys are just gonna have to agree to disagree.

Myself, I have no problem with aquaculture. And did I catch a line up there about it being unnatural to feed cows corn? Did I read that wrong?


----------



## Canadian

Aren't cows supposed to eat grass?


----------



## dukman

Canadian said:


> Aren't cows supposed to eat grass?


Yup, but corn bulks them up faster. It also causes more methane output


----------



## rwc1969

I heard a show on NPR, not my favorite radio station BTW, about cows and how they are commonly raised. It gave a good argument that most cows are in a sense a petroleum byproduct.

The author said we use a petroleum byproduct to fertilize the corn which we in turn feed to the cows, which in turn causes serious disease in cows which leads to pumping cows full of antibodies which bulks em up. A side effect of antibiotics is weight gain.

It would be awful hard to feed the masses on free range cattle though.


----------



## WildMist

*Fish Farming*

Fish farming is going on all over the world. My only issue with it is I think it's irresponsible to net off a part of a lake or any body of water that feeds into our drinking system and to naively think that the fish being netted off is going to stop the little new borns from escaping thru the net is unbelievably stupid. 
Fish farming if it's going to be done should be in a pond that doesn't feed into any other waterway and not only the water but the land surrounding and beneath the lake should be tested to make sure there aren't any harmful chemicals to humans.
I won't argue the fact that we may need to do this to ensure renewable food source for our families in the future, however like most people on this site I prefer to get my food the natural way "hunting, fishing and farming vegetables not fish.:canflag:


----------



## Jason

I really don't think the 7 cows we have right now are endangering the atmosphere. Bulking them up quickly makes good business sense-the longer they live the more they eat. That said, we actively seek out products that are labled to state that they do not contain hormones. Even when we milked cows we used antibiotics as little as possible due to the expense. And rest assured, every single truckload of milk is tested at the plant and the truck driver pulls a sample from every farm tank on his route to test for antibiotics. If the truck sample comes up "hot", they start testing the individual samples and the lucky winner buys himself a truckload of tainted milk. Again, because of the cost and financial risk involved, medicines are very limited in their use. I can't speak for factory farms, but that's the way it was around here at least up until we got out of dairying 9 years ago.

I just wanted to pass that along to hopefully halt some fears about antibiotics. I avoid hormones at all costs and by buying local and/or organic you mitigate that fear as well.


----------



## GatorDude

I don't have a problem with fish farming, but I do have a problem with fish farms that risk introducing non-native fish into an ecosystem. If you want to farm asian carp, there is a great place to do that -- Asia. In the Southeastern U.S., we should have enough kudzu, water hyacinths, and pythons to no better than introduce more non-native species in our environment.


----------



## Jason

Point made, and I have another one for you. Years ago, as it was told to me, Penn State University came up with a plant called multiflower rose to be used as hedgerows and fence rows. It's dense, thorny, and grows like heck. Now it's everywhere. May just be urban legend, but that's what I was told.


----------



## TechAdmin

Gentically Modified plant starins are crazy and will take over any natural vegetation. I tried looking for that but couldn't find it. Any body have a link?


----------



## Riverdale

You can can fish that is not pickled. You just need to pressure can it rather than HWB.

The Ball Blue Book has recipes.


----------



## Sonnyjim

Have to be honest. If you have a small pond would you not rather stock it with Brook or Rainbow trout that require small ammounts of oxygen rather than Catfish? I find them soo fishy and hard to eat. In a dire situation I would ravage any bit of meat don't get me wrong but why not eat caviar over zebra mussels?


----------



## TechAdmin

Catfish can survive anything and there not hard to eat at all although I would prefer trout or salmon.


----------



## iron-bear38

*fish farming*

I think fish farming is a viable food source/storage soulition. But only when maintained in harmoney with the ecosystem. to introduce non-native fish or try and bulk up the fish is foolish & dangerous as corpret america has proven.


----------



## TechAdmin

My mother in law has a Koi pond and I would eat them in a pinch.


----------

