Close to 40% of the seafood we eat nowadays comes from aquaculture; the $78 billion industry has grown 9% a year since 1975, making it the fastest-growing food group, and global demand has doubled since that time.
To create 1 kg (2.2 lbs.) of high-protein fishmeal, which is fed to farmed fish (along with fish oil, which also comes from other fish), it takes 4.5 kg (10 lbs.) of smaller pelagic, or open-ocean, fish.
A staggering 37% of all global seafood is now ground into feed, up from 7.7% in 1948, according to recent research from the UBC Fisheries Centre. One third of that feed goes to China, where 70% of the world's fish farming takes place; China now devotes nearly 1 million hectares (close to 4,000 sq. mi.) of land to shrimp farms. And about 45% of the global production of fishmeal and fish oil goes to the world's livestock industry, mostly pigs and poultry, up from 10% in 1988.
Source: Time Magazine online
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1663604,00.html
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2 comments:
Hey there sexy beast! Good god that is a lot of sea food. Keep the smartness come'n
From
THE BADEST MAN IN THE LAND nico
Jake,
Yikes. This fish thing reads bad for sustainability! You've done a great job of highlighting some of the concerns and energy inefficiencies of our fish industry. This can be carried over to our meat industries in general- so much food-energy, land, and resources put in, so little out. Another concern is the high levels of pollution produced by fish farms, and ecosystem-loss. In China, I read somewhere(?), that 70% of their mangroves have been lost to near-shore fish farms. Oh, the troubles...
Anyhow, nice work!
Bean
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