Collapsing fisheries; feeding livestock more fish than the Japanese eat; Mass extinctions; Go vegan!
I’m posting a three-part set of videos of Paul Watson’s Keynote Address from AR2008 below. It is so important, especially the last part, not only because of what he and his group does for animals, but what he says about the fishing industry, the killing of the oceans, and things I never heard before, like around half the fish caught goes to feed livestock, and that more tuna goes to feed our cats, than humans consume. Feeding fish to livestock is a totally, and obscenely unsustainable practice, when all of the world’s fisheries are already in a state of collapse, and in light of the scientists’ predication that if the fishing industry doesn’t change the way they fish, there will be no fish left by 2048. (Let’s not blame the seals or the sharks for eating fish. Let’s blame the fishing industry and the meat industry — who are keeping up with consumer demand — and consumer waste.) He also talks about the species of fish who are killed before they reach sexual maturity — so those species aren’t likely to recover. This should be reason enough for environmentalists to want to adopt a plant-based diet, and preach it to others. It isn’t even just about the horrendous treatment of farmed animals that people don’t want to hear about. It’s about mass extinctions — maybe including us. Wake up! Speak out! Do more than change your light bulbs! Do more than rearrange the chairs on the Titanic, as you Episcopalians like to say.
Here’s a link to the transcript of Rabbi David Saperstein’s statement at last year’s Senate hearing on climate change, because he had some good things to say.
Here’s a link to our Presiding Bishop’s talk from the Healing Our Planet Earth Conference who also talked about the dying oceans, overfishing, eating lower on the food chain, and the suffering we cause others in poor parts of the world by our choices.
Paul Watson, Part 1:
Part 2:
Part 3:
Here’s something I found while Googling for “mass extinctions”:
Mass Extinctions And ‘Rise Of Slime’ Predicted For Oceans
ScienceDaily (Aug. 13, 2008) — Human activities are cumulatively driving the health of the world’s oceans down a rapid spiral, and only prompt and wholesale changes will slow or perhaps ultimately reverse the catastrophic problems they are facing.
Read it all….
This is more along the lines of what I was searching for:
Fish and pigs and chickens, oh my!
Farm animals consume 17 percent of wild-caught fish
Excerpt:
“Each year we feed 14 million tons of wild-caught fish (including anchovies, sardines, mackerel, and herring) to pigs and chickens around the globe. That amounts to 17 percent of all the wild fish we catch. Pigs and chickens eat double the amount of fish that Japan consumes annually and six times more seafood than the entire U.S. population eats each year.”
The hyperlink in the original links to this: On the Multiple Uses of Forage Fish: From Ecosystems to Markets.
This is just one aspect of the meat industry that is new to me since going to the Animal Rights conference earlier this month.
Tags: Climate Change, fisheries, fishing, Katharine Jefferts Schori, livestock, mass extinctions, Paul Watson, Presiding Bishop, Rabbi Saperstein