I understand when people speak about the ethical problems with eating meat, but I think they do not apply to fish.
On a simple level I’d say it depends on the brain structure so it’d vary by fish species even. Though as others have said, things like living conditions and overfishing are ethical issues nonetheless.
Though I just wanted to post this silly video, Would You Eat a Fish if it had Arms and Legs? by Mattias Pilhede. Mirror link
I see two concerns, humanitarian and ecological. The ecological concern is only a problem with overconsumption. The humanitarian concern I don’t think applies to fish since they are dumb.
What about bycatch? That’s a factor in both. Also ecological: the fact that most of the plastic waste in the sea (and on earth in general) is from fishing. Also, not all seafood is dumb. Octopus is one of the smartest things out there and we eat that. Lobsters have been shown to feel pain and we boil them alive.
I was referring to the creatures that are commonly thought of when you hear “fish;” salmon, halibut, tuna etc
So you’re only addressing the dumb point… despite some of these not being considered intelligent, they still have central nervous systems and therefore feel pain. That’s a very basic ethical concern. Why is intelligence the only concern? Should we eat all the dumber humans?
Bycatch is also an issue in this point because innocent and more intelligent creatures like dolphin and octopus will be caught, killed and not even eaten.
Cries in Gen X.
Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And, weak men create hard times. – G. Michael Hopf, Those Who Remain (The New World )
Yes, it’s ethical to eat fish. I’m against the industrial practices, but that doesnt have anything to do with people eating them.
Could depend on the fish species in question? Lionfish for example is extremely invasive in the Southern USA, so environmental agencies have been encouraging people to eat them to curb their population, potentially making it a more ethical choice. I’ve been seeing it pop up more and more, but it doesn’t seem to have caught on too much.
But we should definetly limit our consumption though when it comes to more threatened/overfished species. There’s also some unethical fishing practices out there such as the practice of removing sharks’ fins then stranding them, harm to cetaceans, and destructive fishing techniques that should get a lot more legal recourse.
The only reason it hasn’t caught on is because they are very difficult to catch (spear) and even more difficult to prepare (venom glands). They are unbelievably delicious, but even so, I’m not going to trust a chef a don’t know to be sure he didn’t pierce one of those glands while preparing it. I’ll trust myself or one of my friends that I no for 100% certain can do it right. So even though a handful of restaurants were offering it in the Keys and Miami, you’ll really see people catching it themselves and preparing it just to be sure.
There’s no such thing as ethical consumption, so go away and eat whatever you want.
That is not how that axiom works or how it’s actualized lmao
Depends on the perspective being considered:
Are fish sentient? Yes.
Are they very sentient, with lots of free-will? No.
Does our current industry’s completely-gutting the marine food-chain have global consequences? Yes.
How are we doing with respect to keeping that food-chain alive? Terrible: any species that becomes our industrial prey, gets reduced to 10% of its normal population within 1 decade.
Cod used to live to be about 80y old, ttbomk, now they live to be 8, or less.
The smashing of the coral-forests they breed in, at the bottom of the ocean, with dragger-nets ( falsely called “rock hoppers” ), means the cod-fishery collapsed & stayed collapsed, and all fisheries are “managed” like that, by lobbying to protect industrial-ignorance.
Accountability won’t ever happen, because industry/money won’t tolerate that.
There’s a ScientificallyTestablePrediction in the Christian bible, in Rev, that both terrestrial & marine food-chains collapse ( at the time of the “3rd Seal” ).
That is going to happen this century, no matter what political/religious rabies goes rampaging where.
All the political & religious & food-insecurity & ClimatePunctuation wars that we must enact in order to “manage” our unconscious-minds’ stress/fear/panic, and all of the nihilist malicious-actors ( China cyaniding other country’s seas, because those other countries are not breaking & obeying China, in recent news )…
Morality is contextual.
Personal-context can say 1 thing, or another, global context can be quite different.
Buddha said that eating the flesh of another’s life was faulty because they never consented to be butchered/consumed, and that is true.
I can’t remember what other reasons were given, that one stuck on me.
I don’t eat any meat, or that aweful “Beyond Meat” or “Impossible Meat” stuff, because I can’t then reach the meditations I’m using to rip my continuum out from this world’s ideology-driven death-spasms, and remaining in this world, now, is indulging in being ground-to-hamburger, in my eyes.
I want out.
Eating meat of any kind blocks me from progressing on that through the meditations, exactly as the ancient rishis of India said.
That tested to be true.
You have to live with yourself, not with my conscience.
You decide on your own morality: you have to live with it.
I’ve never bothered learning the “precepts” or any of the other stuff of AwakeSoulism/Buddhism: I care about results, not about dogma.
What tests to be true, that is worth relying-on, for me.
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Thems a lotta words, bro.
It is ethical to eat fish and meat.
Very well thought out.
I don’t think they apply to most animals either, so yes.
Hey everyone, this guy doesn’t believe in ethics so we can all do whatever we want!
I said no such thing. I said the supposed ethical problems with eating animals referenced by OP are not ones I think apply to most animals, and so it is ethical to eat them.
What “supposed” ethical problems are you referring to that you’re hand waving away then? That farm animals are cute? How about overfishing, destruction of marine environments, bycatch, pollution caused by and left in the sea by fishing, evidence that fish feel pain and that some are proven to have more complex intelligence than other animals.
All of the above.
So because eating fish has ethical problems it’s ethical to eat them?
I do not believe there are any ethical problems to eating fish, or most other animals used for meat.
That’s not really how ethical problems work. They are supposed to define why we should or shouldn’t do something. Even saying “nah dawg, fish tasty” would be more reasoning than you’ve provided.
Very well thought out.
Thanks, it’s difficult to have a discussion with people when they won’t actually engage in a discussion.
Fishing is industrialized too, so that can be a problem, specifically with the aquatic ecosystem. For vegans, fish still have a central nervous system so they are deemed undesireable. I still would eat fish because of health reasons, though.
I’m reminded of the thought experiment of the vegan oyster.
The oyster lacks a CNS and cannot feel pain or suffering. It’s farming is a net benefit on the environment its in as it acts as a natural filter for purifying waterways. It is nutritious. Is it vegan? If not, why? Is it that is merely alive? How does that differ from a plant or mushroom?
While I don’t think one could seriously suggest an oyster is vegan friendly food, it’s an interesting line of thinking to inspect one’s own values.
Depends on the ethical framework you use to decide eating animals is unacceptable. A person picking diet based on religious teachings might land on a different position than a person who picking their diet based on opposition to factory farming.
I can’t think of any ethics or morals that are universal. Even the simplistic “golden rule”, “do unto others as you would have them do unto you” is open to some interpretation.
What about eating meat is ethical or unethical and how does that apply or not apply to eating fish?
extreme environmental issues, mass execution of innocence, destruction of indigenous culture and land.
theres definitely a couple easy ones to point to.
idk why it wouldnt apply to fish
People’s opinions will differ, and most people’s won’t be changed. Instead of a discussion, it will be people yelling at each other until they both leave angry.
Personally, I think it’s not ethical to eat any meat, whether that is white, red, wet, or otherwise.
Other people have, and will, think it is ethical to eat all meat, including other humans.Mmmm, a good chianti with your liver. Bon appetit!
I would prefer the fava beans
If you often see people yelling at each other online, you need to understand that the volume and tone are provided by your brain, not by the content online.
Maybe you just read people as yelling
Why do you think they do not apply?
Some reasons why I think they apply:
- fish are animals
- industrial fishing is destroying the oceans and sea life (way more is killed than what ends up sold and eventually maybe eaten)
- international waters are a lawless playground for every abuse imaginable
I eat fish so I am not playing the guilt game, they’re just the ethical considerations I can think of.
It’s not that they don’t apply to us, it’s that they don’t apply to many vegetarian cultures. I remember a lesson in history class about how, when Buddhism arrived in Japan and preached against meat consumption, fish were so ingrained in Japanese diet they had a literal revolution to keep fish on the menu. Not just the stereotypical things like sushi, but I guess they like fish so much they’ll eat dolphins (which their cuisine has always considered “fish”), which to me is equal in gravity to cannibalism, this coming from someone who doesn’t necessarily like them. Because if an animal is mindful enough to engage in diplomacy, why the hell are we eating them?
Sometimes this “except you” attitude is also applied to insects, though that seems to be less culturally specific. If people need to for some reason reconcile vegetarianism with needing meat, I don’t understand why they don’t do the obvious thing and just separate meat of animals killed in cold blood from other meats.
I think this kind of example is interesting as it demonstrates how much of a person’s values and ethics are determined by cultural factors.
I’ve always been fascinated by cuisine as a part of culture and your demonstrated overlap of cuisine and ethics is another fascinating aspect to ponder.
Sushi as we know it is actually relatively modern. The Japanese made a few exceptions to vegetarianism mostly out of practicality. For example, birds were also not seen as animals.
Somewhat related to this, there was an emperor who died of beriberi because apparently all he ate was polished white rice.
Counterpoint: we really don’t know how much self-awareness fish have versus the mammals that the OP seems to be referring to. Call it gross anthropocentrism, but most people respect the lives of non-humans in terms of intelligence. Pigs are pretty well understood to he intelligent and are probably conscious of what’s going on around them. Some shrimp? Maybe not.
This doesn’t really address the meta concerns w/r/t procurement in your comment, but if I had to choose between a plate of fish or a plate of pork, this would be my thought process.
We do know octopi, for example, can solve complex puzzles
‘Octopi’, interestingly enough, is a result of people assuming that the word ‘octopus’ comes from Latin because it ends in -us, which would mean that the correct plural drops the ‘us’ and replaces it with an ‘i’. But, trickily enough, it does not come from Latin; it comes from Greek. As a result, if you’re trying to be super technical, the correct plural would instead replace the ‘us’ with ‘odes’–octopodes.
Of course, almost nobody actually uses that term unless they’re doing it for fun. The most commonly used, correct plurals for octopus are ‘octopuses’ and ‘octopus’.
I hope you enjoy that little tidbit as much as I did when I learned it.
That’s true, and a lot of westerners take issue with octopus as food
Just to be the super-nerd, octopus is not a regular latin word.
I think it is actually a greek loan word in latin.So the plural is either octopodes to follow the original greek or octopuses in regular english.
The correct plural is whatever word you say that people understand as meaning more than one octopus. That’s how language works.
If enough people make a language mistake, it becomes a rule.
The Octopuses solving puzzles is actually overblown a bit. I used to work in an aquarium and had to teach an octopus to open a jar to get its food out. They can do this, but they’re not that smart so you need to break it into tiny steps. Even ‘your food is inside the jar’ was a difficult lesson.
@ozymandias117 octopuses can also teach puzzlesolving to others and also display altruism.
They will also punch fish they hunt with if they are frustrated with them, which is hilarious.
They also are very good with olives and potatoes
@PP_BOY_ but more and more research is showing us that fish are smart.
E.g goldfish driving “cars” around in a room, the research on those fish that choose eels to hunt with and communicate via gesture, etc
If fish could eat you do you believe they would think it’s unethical?
If you answer it’s yes then don’t eat fish.
If a fish ate me, I wouldn’t find it unethical at all.
I feel the same about cows, chickens and pigs.
I mean undesirable and unethical are not the same thing. I wouldn’t really even place an ethical question on a fish, unless maybe they live in an aquarium and know better or something (like eating their handler, assuming living conditions are good). Not even moral questions really, though a hungry fish is probably acting pretty morally to meet its base needs TBH.
That said, if there was a neck-snapper-fish I’m pretty sure people would seek it out. And they’d say stuff like live by the fish, die by the fish.
I will go to swim with sharks to see if they talk about if eating me it’s ethical or not.
I mean if I was in the ocean and a shark just wanted to grab a bite to eat that’s just fine. I can’t really swim anyways so I guess that’d be preferable. Just as long as they’re quick about it.
Also I hear sharks are really smooth, so that’s nice.
Fish can and do eat you
There’s a fish nibbling on me right now and i didn’t even notice!
