Take a look at the fish in your local supermarket and you’ll likely find that tilapia is featured front and center in most display cases. Tilapia is now in the top ten seafoods consumed in the United States, and is featured in almost every fish recipe you find while browsing the web.
Did you know that for that fish to get on your plate, a long road of ecological impact had to be traversed? In fact, most of us have no idea how our food arrives on our table, and it is our responsibility to inform ourselves, and to demand ecologically friendly farming practices as well as other improvements that can make our next meal one we can feel good about.
Approximately 2.3 million metric tons of tilapia is produced annually and of that 73% is farmed. As we know by the many charts that we’ve posted throughout these last months, China is the largest producer of farmed tilapia in the world. As you can imagine from your experience with other Chinese industries (does drywall ring a bell?), the economy-of-scale fish farming, brings familiar problems that pressure farmers into cultivating even cheaper tilapia to satisfy the demand for protein in the West. What many farmers and resellers don’t see is that the equilibrium of nature cannot be disturbed without consequences.
Pollution is one of the largest problems brought on by the large-scale fish farming. As we’ve seen with salmon farms in Canada, excess waste can create a dantesque problem for the bio diversity and can render a water source a bane and lifeless environment. The same can happen with tilapia, not only is the fish waste being disposed directly into the water source, but as some reports suggest, it is being reused along with other forms of waste water to include human waste and other industry derivatives.
The problem, as we’ve seen many times with other products and industries is that Third World governments tend to omit environmental issues due to sidelined economic incentives or ineffective supervisory structure. Many governments around the world are not trained, or don’t have the manpower or expertise to deal with problems that, when placed in perspective, don’t appear to be of urgency.
Let’s talk about solutions. The world wildlife fund better known by its acronym WWF, has drafted a series of standards to be adopted by governments near and far [that are involved in tilapia farming and/or other large-scale fish production], in order to follow ecologically responsible practices and ensure the local biodiversity will not be impacted by farming or its byproducts. The goal of the standards is to measurably reduce or eliminate the negative impacts of tilapia farming, address the food safety and human health concerns related to the imported tilapia and to achieve performance levels while permitting the tilapia farming industry to remain economically viable.
In a bold, grandiose, and brilliant effort, the world wildlife fund will give the standards to a new organization called the Aquaculture Stewardship Council or ASC, that will be responsible for the enforcement and compliance of the standards. It is important to note that the tilapia production facilities will be evaluated based on performance standards and will not be prejudged as environmentally or socially acceptable. This means that they must “obey the law and comply with all international national and local regulations, expand farms or move to conserve natural habitats or biodiversity, conserve water resources, local fish species, and use the resources efficiently all while ensuring food safety, social responsibility and environmental health”.
These standards make it much easier for local governments, institutions and NGOs and other involved parties, to have measurable objectives to analyze which will also aid in the promotion of eco-friendly farming and aquaculture related efforts around the world. The real problem facing responsible farming of tilapia species, is the generalized fear of adverse consumer reaction to rising prices. To aid this issue is important to promote local production as well as consumer education. As consumers learn about where their food comes from and how it was grown, they will take more eco-friendly stances and will approve of a higher price in order to be responsible with the environment. Let’s not forget that in 2009 alone the organic food and beverage market made over $24 billion in sales, while before that it had been growing at the rate of $1 billion per year. If farmers need more incentives to take care of the environment there are more than 24 billion reasons for them to consider eco-friendly practices.
To learn more about this great WWF initiative go to: http://www.worldwildlife.org/what/globalmarkets/aquaculture/dialogues-tilapia.html
Aquaculture News
A Measure of Success
Take a look at the fish in your local supermarket and you’ll likely find that tilapia is featured front and center in most display cases. Tilapia is now in the top ten seafoods consumed in the United States, and is featured in almost every fish recipe you find while browsing the web.
Did you know that for that fish to get on your plate, a long road of ecological impact had to be traversed? In fact, most of us have no idea how our food arrives on our table, and it is our responsibility to inform ourselves, and to demand ecologically friendly farming practices as well as other improvements that can make our next meal one we can feel good about.
Approximately 2.3 million metric tons of tilapia is produced annually and of that 73% is farmed. As we know by the many charts that we’ve posted throughout these last months, China is the largest producer of farmed tilapia in the world. As you can imagine from your experience with other Chinese industries (does drywall ring a bell?), the economy-of-scale fish farming, brings familiar problems that pressure farmers into cultivating even cheaper tilapia to satisfy the demand for protein in the West. What many farmers and resellers don’t see is that the equilibrium of nature cannot be disturbed without consequences.
Pollution is one of the largest problems brought on by the large-scale fish farming. As we’ve seen with salmon farms in Canada, excess waste can create a dantesque problem for the bio diversity and can render a water source a bane and lifeless environment. The same can happen with tilapia, not only is the fish waste being disposed directly into the water source, but as some reports suggest, it is being reused along with other forms of waste water to include human waste and other industry derivatives.
The problem, as we’ve seen many times with other products and industries is that Third World governments tend to omit environmental issues due to sidelined economic incentives or ineffective supervisory structure. Many governments around the world are not trained, or don’t have the manpower or expertise to deal with problems that, when placed in perspective, don’t appear to be of urgency.
Let’s talk about solutions. The world wildlife fund better known by its acronym WWF, has drafted a series of standards to be adopted by governments near and far [that are involved in tilapia farming and/or other large-scale fish production], in order to follow ecologically responsible practices and ensure the local biodiversity will not be impacted by farming or its byproducts. The goal of the standards is to measurably reduce or eliminate the negative impacts of tilapia farming, address the food safety and human health concerns related to the imported tilapia and to achieve performance levels while permitting the tilapia farming industry to remain economically viable.
In a bold, grandiose, and brilliant effort, the world wildlife fund will give the standards to a new organization called the Aquaculture Stewardship Council or ASC, that will be responsible for the enforcement and compliance of the standards. It is important to note that the tilapia production facilities will be evaluated based on performance standards and will not be prejudged as environmentally or socially acceptable. This means that they must “obey the law and comply with all international national and local regulations, expand farms or move to conserve natural habitats or biodiversity, conserve water resources, local fish species, and use the resources efficiently all while ensuring food safety, social responsibility and environmental health”.
These standards make it much easier for local governments, institutions and NGOs and other involved parties, to have measurable objectives to analyze which will also aid in the promotion of eco-friendly farming and aquaculture related efforts around the world. The real problem facing responsible farming of tilapia species, is the generalized fear of adverse consumer reaction to rising prices. To aid this issue is important to promote local production as well as consumer education. As consumers learn about where their food comes from and how it was grown, they will take more eco-friendly stances and will approve of a higher price in order to be responsible with the environment. Let’s not forget that in 2009 alone the organic food and beverage market made over $24 billion in sales, while before that it had been growing at the rate of $1 billion per year. If farmers need more incentives to take care of the environment there are more than 24 billion reasons for them to consider eco-friendly practices.
To learn more about this great WWF initiative go to: http://www.worldwildlife.org/what/globalmarkets/aquaculture/dialogues-tilapia.html