How many anchovies are killed per 15ml of fish sauce? Does the suffering total end up worse than chicken per gram if you weight by neurons and assume that anchovy lives are, say, half as bad as chickens’?
one slaughtered Cornish-cross produces 1,125 g of chicken flesh
one Peruvian anchoveta produces 13-39 grams of fish sauce
a gram of fish-sauce requires 29-87 times as many directly slaughtered animals as a gram of chicken (assuming we are ignoring animal feed, and the possibility they are using larger fish species)
I’m not finding any data on the number of neurons in anchovies/​sardine/​herring but If I did I still think neuron/​body-weight is a better proxy for suffering capacity, considering the role of more neurons in managing a larger body.
I don’t think ignoring animal feed makes sense here, I can’t find the source at the moment but the vast majority of Peruvian anchoveta is reduced to fish meal and exported to countries like China to serve as feed for land animals and even species of larger fish, the incentive structure is such that factories that are supposed to produce anchoveta derivatives for direct human consumption illegally produce fish meal.
I think increased consumption of fish sauce over other animals would be moving down the food chain and result in a net decrease in animal suffering, not to mention advantageous for fishing-reliant economies there.
I was initially going to try to take into account animal feed, using the Faunalytics data on animals killed per food product, but If I understood the methodology right It looks like they divided the total number of fish killed for feed by the total number of farmed predators (farmed fish +pigs + chickens), so considering I was looking specifically at chickens, I figured It would be better to just mention that rather than try to incorporate it based on flimsy data, If you could point me to good data on standard diets of farmed predators ( Including common but unconventional carnivores like crocodilians , minks, foxes, edible frogs etc) , or estimates of how many animals they are eating, that would be interesting
How many anchovies are killed per 15ml of fish sauce? Does the suffering total end up worse than chicken per gram if you weight by neurons and assume that anchovy lives are, say, half as bad as chickens’?
https://​​iamafoodblog.com/​​fish-sauce/​​ this website says 3 parts fish to 1 part salt for a simple fish sauce.
https://​​en.wikipedia.org/​​wiki/​​Dressed_weight for chickens 75% of the live weight is edible
, and Cornish-crosses are generally 1.5 kg when slaughtered https://​​en.wikipedia.org/​​wiki/​​Broiler
http://​​fishcount.org.uk/​​studydatascreens/​​numbers-of-fish-caught-A0.php?sort2/​​full a Peruvian anchoveta weights between 10-29 grams
one slaughtered Cornish-cross produces 1,125 g of chicken flesh
one Peruvian anchoveta produces 13-39 grams of fish sauce
a gram of fish-sauce requires 29-87 times as many directly slaughtered animals as a gram of chicken (assuming we are ignoring animal feed, and the possibility they are using larger fish species)
I’m not finding any data on the number of neurons in anchovies/​sardine/​herring but If I did I still think neuron/​body-weight is a better proxy for suffering capacity, considering the role of more neurons in managing a larger body.
I don’t think ignoring animal feed makes sense here, I can’t find the source at the moment but the vast majority of Peruvian anchoveta is reduced to fish meal and exported to countries like China to serve as feed for land animals and even species of larger fish, the incentive structure is such that factories that are supposed to produce anchoveta derivatives for direct human consumption illegally produce fish meal.
I think increased consumption of fish sauce over other animals would be moving down the food chain and result in a net decrease in animal suffering, not to mention advantageous for fishing-reliant economies there.
I was initially going to try to take into account animal feed, using the Faunalytics data on animals killed per food product, but If I understood the methodology right It looks like they divided the total number of fish killed for feed by the total number of farmed predators (farmed fish +pigs + chickens), so considering I was looking specifically at chickens, I figured It would be better to just mention that rather than try to incorporate it based on flimsy data, If you could point me to good data on standard diets of farmed predators ( Including common but unconventional carnivores like crocodilians , minks, foxes, edible frogs etc) , or estimates of how many animals they are eating, that would be interesting