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From all–you–can–eat popcorn shrimp at chain restaurants, to bite-sized maki rolls at trendy sushi bars, to salmon steaks on the backyard barbecue –– seafood is no longer just a fish–on–Friday phenomenon. Americans eat 25 percent more seafood than they did 20 years ago, an average of 16 pounds a year.

But many of these fish-lovers would be horrified to learn that huge quantities of fish and shrimp are now being grown in giant nets and cages, where antibiotics, hormones and pesticides mingle with disease and waste. These industrialized “aquaculture facilities” are rapidly replacing natural methods of fishing that have been used to catch fresh, wild seafood for millennia.

Just as multinational corporations have forever changed the way food is grown on land –– to the detriment of public health, the environment, local communities and food quality itself –– they are poised to do the same at sea. The identical factory-farm model is being adopted for aquaculture: growing food as cheaply as possible using toxic chemicals and other harmful techniques, packaging it in enormous bulk, and shipping it to distant grocery stores and restaurants all around the world.

For more than a decade, the federal government has promoted and pursued first–of–its–kind plans to open our federal oceans to the largely untested practice of commercial–scale open ocean aquaculture. The Bush administration argues that this industry, which involves farming carnivorous finfish in massive open net pens located between 3 and 200 miles off the U.S. coast, will increase the United States’ food security by developing a domestic aquaculture industry rather than relying on imports. However, open ocean aquaculture poses serious threats to human health, the marine environment, and fishing communities, while failing to solve our import crisis and while ignoring viable alternatives. 

You can learn more about the problems with offshore fish farming, inland fish farms that are doing it right, and what our decision makers in Washington should be doing by signing on the Food & Water Watch Fish Campaign email list.

Read More

• Fishy Farms explores the environmental, economic and technological problems of open ocean aquaculture.
  
• Check out a dozen reasons to stop ocean fish farming.

Take Action

• Sign our petition to stop the Bush administration's ocean fish farming proposal. Keep our oceans and seafood clean and safe by clicking here if you are an individual and here for an organization.

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