- Joined
- Nov 20, 2002
- Messages
- 1,073
Steve O'Shea said:Tons of edible fish is discarded daily by these commercial vessels. What really shocked me was Myopsida's statement that 15-17% (I can't recall offhand which) of orange roughy flesh is recoverable!!!
This is absolutely DISGUSTING! :x
I agree. A lot of it I think is cultural conditioning as to what is and is not acceptable as food. If you asked the average Middle American (unless they came from a state such as Minnesota with a large Scandinavian population) whether they would eat eel, their reaction would most likely be, "Yecch!" Never mind that these same people eat fish, and if my limited biology background serves me, eels are basically just elongated fish.
In many indigenous cultures, insects (such as grasshoppers, ants, and grubs of various species) and arachnids (spiders and scorpions) are commonly eaten. In the Old Testament, locusts are listed among the kosher animals, and are therefore permissible for even devout Jews to eat -- as exemplified in the New Testament by John the Baptist who lived on "locusts and honey" in the wilderness.
IMHO, 21st century people -- especially in the western world -- need to be educated about the diverse renewable sources of nutrition, both plant and animal, that are available to them. The more diverse these sources, the less chance there is of one of them being used up or driven to extinction.
People's minds can be changed, as history demonstrates. In America of two centuries ago, crustaceans (shrimp, lobster, crab) were literally considered garbage, to be eaten only in desperate situations when no other food source was available. Now, of course, in most parts of the US, they are far more expensive than fish, poultry, and most red meats.
Also, when I was a child in the 1950s, very few people here ate soy products, and even the local Chinese restaurants rarely carried tofu (called bean curd back then) because Americans just weren't used to it. Soy -- like yogurt and wheat germ -- was considered an unpleasant oddity only eaten by "health nuts" or people whose doctors recommended it for medical reasons. Half a century later, soy-based ingredients are found in a vast array of snack foods and gourmet dishes, wheat germ is often used in cereals and smoothies, and yogurt is available in dozens of delicious flavors and textures.
So I believe that the campaign to popularize more sustainable and diversified food sources should begin at the grass-roots level, i.e., making these sources more palatable and appealing, and then if demand precedes supply, the farms and fisheries will find it profitable to diversify their products.
(I don't know macro-economics lingo so I don't know if I am expressing this correctly, but hopefully you know what I mean.)
Me