Most people don’t care where their fish comes from. So I imagine that even if you eat a fish from a good farm, the person who would’ve otherwise eaten that fish will now buy some other fish which might come from a bad farm. Well, it’s more complicated but you get the general idea, you increase the demand for fish and the question is how that extra demand will be fulfilled rather than where your particular fish comes from. I’m not sure to what degree this is actually the case. To make this argument formally, you’d have to look at cross elasticities of demand or some other economics stuff that I don’t know about.
I’m also not sure how good farms can actually be right now when we don’t seem to know that much about what is needed for each fish species to have good welfare right now (again, this is not my area, so please don’t cite me on this).
Also note that many farmed fish are carnivorous so other smaller fish are caught from the wild and killed to feed them. There is some suffering in how they are caught. E.g., those fish are left to suffocate in the air which is like maximally stressful for them, although it depends on species how long they are suffocating. Maybe most die quickly, I’m not sure. And they have to spend some time in really crowded nets. I don’t know much about enviromental impacts of all this. But maybe it doesn’t matter much because they can’t catch any more of those fish from the ocean than they do now anyway so I’m not sure if the fish you would eat would change how many they catch.
Also, they are starting to farm insects to feed fish (to supplement protein from wild-caught fish which I think is currently limiting how fast fish farming can grow). Are insects sentient? Do they suffer in farm conditions? We don’t know but I’d rather we didn’t farm trillions of them just in case the answer to both questions is a yes.
Ah the elasticities is a good point! And the suffering of the smaller fish is also important.
Elasticities is super interesting because something else I was considering was “would I be willing to work for a company like this”. The elasticity is relevant in a pretty different way when I’m asking “should I eat this fish” vs. “should I work to expand the reach of this company that I think on balance treats fish well.” There could be a scenario where I’m willing to work for the company but still not eat fish (that world is not this world though—I’m not convinced they treat fish that well)
Most people don’t care where their fish comes from. So I imagine that even if you eat a fish from a good farm, the person who would’ve otherwise eaten that fish will now buy some other fish which might come from a bad farm. Well, it’s more complicated but you get the general idea, you increase the demand for fish and the question is how that extra demand will be fulfilled rather than where your particular fish comes from. I’m not sure to what degree this is actually the case. To make this argument formally, you’d have to look at cross elasticities of demand or some other economics stuff that I don’t know about.
I’m also not sure how good farms can actually be right now when we don’t seem to know that much about what is needed for each fish species to have good welfare right now (again, this is not my area, so please don’t cite me on this).
Also note that many farmed fish are carnivorous so other smaller fish are caught from the wild and killed to feed them. There is some suffering in how they are caught. E.g., those fish are left to suffocate in the air which is like maximally stressful for them, although it depends on species how long they are suffocating. Maybe most die quickly, I’m not sure. And they have to spend some time in really crowded nets. I don’t know much about enviromental impacts of all this. But maybe it doesn’t matter much because they can’t catch any more of those fish from the ocean than they do now anyway so I’m not sure if the fish you would eat would change how many they catch.
Also, they are starting to farm insects to feed fish (to supplement protein from wild-caught fish which I think is currently limiting how fast fish farming can grow). Are insects sentient? Do they suffer in farm conditions? We don’t know but I’d rather we didn’t farm trillions of them just in case the answer to both questions is a yes.
Ah the elasticities is a good point! And the suffering of the smaller fish is also important.
Elasticities is super interesting because something else I was considering was “would I be willing to work for a company like this”. The elasticity is relevant in a pretty different way when I’m asking “should I eat this fish” vs. “should I work to expand the reach of this company that I think on balance treats fish well.” There could be a scenario where I’m willing to work for the company but still not eat fish (that world is not this world though—I’m not convinced they treat fish that well)