[2muchcoffeeman]

I find it weird that people won't eat meat and poultry, but still eat fish and seafood and sometimes cite environmental reasons.

Most fish are caught and some sea based farming efforts have been pretty terrible for the environment.

I reckon if you want to eat meat still you should mostly be eating chicken.

[lukan]

"I reckon if you want to eat meat still you should mostly be eating chicken. "

But favorably chicken that has seen the sun and real soil to pick in, not only on the way to the slaughterhouse.

And there is nothing inheritently wrong with fishing, it is just that the way it is usually done, is quite horrific. But there is somewhat certified ethical fishing. Or local fishermen.

[2muchcoffeeman]

The massive problem with fishing is that the fish are wild. They need to get replaced by nature. You can’t scale up the operation. Add to that pollution, warming seas, and you’re disturbing a system way too much.

What’s the plan once the oceans are messed up permanently?

At this moment, I think factory farmed chicken would have less impact on the environment.

[lukan]

The oceans are huge.

When you are not overfishing and destroying the ground with bad trawling, where is the problem?

(But yes, it is a problem, that both is done)

The oceans warming is a separate problem.

And I like fish as well as chicken as well as beef. But I don't have to eat it every day.

[meyum33]

At this point wouldn’t it be easier to artificially select for traits that make the chicken mind more tolerant of poor conditions? Like if we can have consciousless chicken then it wouldn’t matter the condition they grow under?

[abound]

Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy has you covered here, with sentient cows engineered to be ecstatic about the thought of being killed for meat.

[Filligree]

This seems problematic in a different way.

[lukan]

It sounds way easier, to continue to pretend, that animals don't have feelings. And in general not know too much of the meat factories. Which is why many people choose this approach.

Also like the sibling comment said, not really possible with our tech and knowledge. Lab grown meat would be the way to go to achieve it.

[mywacaday]

Like this guy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_the_Headless_Chicken

[Applejinx]

That is one heck of a story. Salient to discussion about consciousness: to what extent does the ability to act like awareness, count as awareness for the purposes of outside observers?

[frereubu]

This guy is way ahead of you: https://www.wired.com/2012/02/headless-chicken-solution/

I imagine the meat would be pretty tasteless though.

[c22]

You would need a clearer working model of consciousnes to be able to know whether your efforts were succeeding. But this is the idea behind lab-grown meat, just don't grow the brain at all and you don't have to worry as much.

[graemep]

There are other reasons than environmental for eating fish but not meat.

I used to be pescatarian and my main reason for that was factory farming. Once reason I now eat meat is that it has become a lot easier to buy meat that has been well treated.

[ArtDev]

Before I was a programmer, I was a marine biologist and also worked as a fish farmer.

By virtually all metrics, intensive land-based animal farming is much harder on the environment. Also, in terms of animal welfare, its super sketchy even with animals labeled organic.

The misinformation around fish farming is absurd. I think people want to believe in the myth that commercial fishing is a couple guys in a wooden boat; when its actually a floating factory discarding up to half or more of what it kills.

There are many aquatic things I won't eat but mostly it is of the "wild fish" variety (overfishing, pollution, mercury, bycatch). I worked a single season as a fisheries observer in Alaska. The destruction was maddening.

I put wild fish in quotes because many times they are raised in a hatcheries then released into the wild. Which has ruined the gene pool of salmon in places that do this.

After a few years raising chickens at my home farm, I became pescatarian. I drew an arbitrary line at intelligence where I wouldn't eat anything as smart or smarter than a chicken.

Anyhow, avoiding farmed fish while eating land meat is really misinformed. I think the meat industry and commercial fishing industries have managed to completely misinform the American public (and a few well-meaning but misleading documentaries on the subject).

America doesn't not farm very many aquatic things besides oysters, trout and catfish. Which are all very very green industries. I like to bring these ones up in conversations about this topic.

[2muchcoffeeman]

At the moment my line of thinking is “what’s easier to engineer around?”

I’m not saying we should eat “land meat”. I’m saying specifically chicken. I believe they are the most cost effective of the meats.

Of the farmed fish, did you single out trout and catfish because they are green, or has the industry in general improved?

[moffkalast]

I think it's more to do with us being able to empathize more easily with other land animals because we're biologically similar. Fish can't scream in pain or show basically any emotion we'd recognize at all. They're so different it's like looking at a wiggling steak, so it's trivial to dismiss them as simple automatons.

[LazyMans]

It takes some effort, but you can buy responsibly raised/caught seafood. https://www.seafoodwatch.org/recommendations/download-consum...

[poulpy123]

because people feel less close from fish and seashell than birds, and less close than birds than mammals.

[anthomtb]

I refuse to eat Octopus based on its level of sentience.

I regularly eat pig despite a higher level of sentience. And despite having had far more interactions with pigs compared to Octopus.

Point being, we humans really are not rational with our food choices.

[hammock]

>Most fish are caught

Overfishing aside, I guess you would most often find people that believe hunting /fishing for your food is more ethical than farming it

[ArtDev]

Which is absurd when you realize that commercial fishing kills up to half or more than what it catches.

[adrian_b]

Hunting/fishing for food was really more ethical many millennia ago, when humans were fewer than wild terrestrial vertebrates.

Nowadays, there are many more humans and domestic animals than wild terrestrial vertebrates, so hunting could not sustain any non-negligible fraction of the humans.

The modern methods of fishing are much too wasteful, so neither fishing has any future.