Great article JJ! Would be interesting to hear ur thoughts on hunting vs free range farming or something of the like. Is one form of murder “more ethical” than another or does it just come down to the quality of life of the animal (of which improving seems to be a main part of the mission of some of the charities you linked)
Very good, makes me think differently about being a pescetarian, although I do wonder why fish are so expensive to save if they have many more offspring. Compared to a cow which may only have one calf each year (according to the Alaska Dept. of Fish and Game), fish reproduction can vary wildly with species. I'm going to choose Alaskan Salmon as an example as they are very popular, two salmon can produce 2-5k eggs in their one to three year lifetime (also according to the Alaska Dept. of Fish and Game).
These calculations are just based off of the idea that you need to offset the lives of the animals that you kill. If you kill a fish, you need to donate to save the life of another fish. For this, the number of offspring isn't really relevant.
Looking into the spreadsheet that FarmKind uses to calculate this data, it appears that high costs to save the life of a fish are due to a few main reasons.
1. as mentioned earlier, fish are small, so one serving of "fish" makes up a significant portion of an actual fish.
2. the charity that FarmKind looks at for fish, the Fish Welfare Initiative, is seemingly less effective than other charities? They estimate that it costs 1 dollar to help the life of one fish, which is kinda expensive. Additionally, the ways in which the fish are being "helped" doesn't necessarily make their lives perfect. For example, the Fish Welfare Initiative works to give fish more space in their ponds. While this likely makes things a little better for the fish there, the situation is probably still not amazing.
3. A number of fish die prematurely while in the farming process. FarmKind estimates 30.3%. What this means is that if you eat one entire fish, you actually probably caused the death of about 1.303 fish. this increases the amount that you need to donate to offset the lives of the fish lost.
Great article JJ! Would be interesting to hear ur thoughts on hunting vs free range farming or something of the like. Is one form of murder “more ethical” than another or does it just come down to the quality of life of the animal (of which improving seems to be a main part of the mission of some of the charities you linked)
Very good, makes me think differently about being a pescetarian, although I do wonder why fish are so expensive to save if they have many more offspring. Compared to a cow which may only have one calf each year (according to the Alaska Dept. of Fish and Game), fish reproduction can vary wildly with species. I'm going to choose Alaskan Salmon as an example as they are very popular, two salmon can produce 2-5k eggs in their one to three year lifetime (also according to the Alaska Dept. of Fish and Game).
These calculations are just based off of the idea that you need to offset the lives of the animals that you kill. If you kill a fish, you need to donate to save the life of another fish. For this, the number of offspring isn't really relevant.
Looking into the spreadsheet that FarmKind uses to calculate this data, it appears that high costs to save the life of a fish are due to a few main reasons.
1. as mentioned earlier, fish are small, so one serving of "fish" makes up a significant portion of an actual fish.
2. the charity that FarmKind looks at for fish, the Fish Welfare Initiative, is seemingly less effective than other charities? They estimate that it costs 1 dollar to help the life of one fish, which is kinda expensive. Additionally, the ways in which the fish are being "helped" doesn't necessarily make their lives perfect. For example, the Fish Welfare Initiative works to give fish more space in their ponds. While this likely makes things a little better for the fish there, the situation is probably still not amazing.
3. A number of fish die prematurely while in the farming process. FarmKind estimates 30.3%. What this means is that if you eat one entire fish, you actually probably caused the death of about 1.303 fish. this increases the amount that you need to donate to offset the lives of the fish lost.
This data is from this spreadsheet https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1xfoqUE82r_dSJb1vqpmB39Ty1YYusUKAw3wbJTILgb8/edit?gid=845188512#gid=845188512