So, when maggots will get fed to farmed fish we will then be eating maggot fish - unless you don't eat farmed fish, and rely only on wild. Go take the Pledge here: https://salmonpledge.org/video-pledges.
Fish farms will be the first to feed their fish maggots because the industry has fished the top ocean forage fish to collapse; 19 of 20 stocks are collapsing, badly managed or both, says The Sea Around Us document, the experts on the subject. On the other hand, a vegetarian fish like tilapia is a net gain in protein in the world, and likely won't ever need to eat maggots. Hmm.
You can find a link to the Sea Around Us report here: https://fishfarmnews.blogspot.com/2018/01/fish-farm-spin-dc-reid-read-this.html. Norway is singled out for destroying the Jack Mackerel off Chile to the point where it can't be 'harvested' to feed protein to protein, and thus a net loss of protein on the planet.
Don't believe fish farms saying they are 'feeding humanity' and saving fish - that isn't really on when you check how much the fish costs, and how completely the industry has killed off those forage fish - I figured out that in BC, to bring in one crop of maggot fish, er farmed fish, the industry kills 5.76 billion of those ocean fish that should be fed to humans, not to produce luxury items for the First World.
Maggots. Yum.
Does cricket fish sound better? Krill fish does and butterfly fish, too. But what about crab fish or blow fly fish? In the fish farm case the fish eat the maggots, not the other way round, as in the putrification process of rendering flesh to, well, earth, and, well, other flesh, that flies away green backed in search of sex and making a whole lot more maggots.
Yes, I know that lots of farmed fish die and end up covered with as many maggots as will fill up their skin, as in a 'skinful', but let's go with the subject. The following article actually makes a case, not so appetizing a one, but, let's say: ethical case for eating maggot filled meat.
See: https://www.bing.com/search?q=maggot+farmed+fish&pc=MOZD&form=MOZLBR.
And here is a maggot farm: https://newfoodeconomy.org/maggot-revolution/. 'FARM maggot revolution.'
And it looks like they are using black flies, rather than the usual house fly or blow fly that makes its living off putting maggots in meat.
"Unlike house flies, black soldier flies don’t spread disease. (They live only a few days after hatching, and only their larvae feed.) They also look different, with longer bodies, and a narrow waist that gives them a wasp-like appearance."
The writer, Gloria Dickie goes on to say: "Right now, most protein produced to nourish livestock comes from soybeans and fishmeal. But the former is relatively low in protein and requires vast swaths of land to produce—which has caused massive deforestation, especially in the Amazon. Fishmeal, sourced from small, wild forage fish, like herring, Peruvian anchoveta, and menhaden, has a different problem: It’s a finite supply—and demand has already pushed stocks close to collapse."
Yes, as we have been saying.
What else is so great about black flies? They can be grown and harvested in two weeks or less. And, more importantly, they are raised on a diet of food waste. This is where the story gets interesting.
“One of the biggest challenges in rehabilitating the modern food system is figuring out how to move away from a linear farming system and create a circular structure,” explains Taylor [a maggot farmer]. “It takes a lot of effort to determine how to recycle nutrients, and black soldier flies could be the solution.”
"Every one of his plastic bins starts with three grams of fly eggs, around 40,000 individuals, each smaller than the eye of a needle. In three to four days, those eggs will hatch into tiny, 2-millimeter larvae that, when fed on a steady diet of 75 pounds of food waste, will grow 8,000- to 10,000-fold over the next 10 days, to about three-quarters of an inch."
Well, that's pretty interesting. It means that the food waste that goes to a dump can actually be recycled into 'food' for livestock, fish and so on. When we eat the 'meat' that completes the circle and over time there is a massive reduction of 'garbage'. 100,000 maggots actually eat 3.5 tons of food a year. And of course, the farmers are making millions of maggots in that time.
For example, a 2 by 4 foot 'space' can produce 400 kilograms of maggots per year.
"The flies will lay up to 20 grams of eggs—just under a million individuals—per day in each cage, and when that brood reaches full size (up to 10,000 times larger) in their feeding bins just two weeks later, it will be the equivalent of one 440-pound live animal."
In the long run, this could be a good concept for the third world. It's cheap, and runs on waste. Once cooking the maggots to kill them, they get fed to a pond of fish, something that is common in the third world, where it is moist. Note that in the First World, the maggot feed is pre-consumption, as in from farms, factories, rather than kitchen scraps.
In Canada, the CBC news recently pointed out that 58% of food is wasted right now. If it were converted to maggots, we could sit around at night, tossing back a nutty hand of maggots and swilling it down with beer. Hmm. And cheer ourselves up noting that maggots are 50% protein.
Not surprisingly, maggots are picky eaters, preferring cookies and cupcakes and lots of frosting on them, just like us (first made yeasty and pre-fermented by lactobacillus). Maggots take much longer with eating fish and what they scrape off bones. But give them the residue of bakeries and they chow down so loud you can actually hear them hum in the 'farm.'
And you can actually feed them dead farmed fish that die in their millions. Remember that Scotland, Norway and Chile, actually lost more than 100 million fish to disease and, in the latter, an algal bloom in 2017.
Once we get past the yuckiness of eating maggots, the real issue now is cost. Soy is $400/ton while maggots are $2,500/ton but have a much higher protein content. At present, a ton of fish feed is $2,000 to $2,400 per ton (and rising), so maggots are much closer to being in farmed salmon than you might want, er, think.
And, you can be what you eat eats: in BC, that will mean BC maggots and maggot fish, so we will be maggot people. Well, maybe not, but Enterra's plant in BC is crazy for maggots. So, if you want, you could just order some maggots for snacks, or eat farmed maggot fish.
Fortunately in BC, there are lots of wild salmon that don't eat maggots. So if you don't want to eat maggot fish, just take the Pledge above to chow down only on wild salmon. And keep plugged into the news if the idea of eating maggots and maggot fish and maggot cow, and maggot chickens doesn't appeal to you. You can take the pledge to avoid them, too.
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Insect farming in Scotland: https://www.undercurrentnews.com/2019/01/29/buzz-continues-to-grow-around-insect-farming-in-scotland/?utm_source=Undercurrent+News+Alerts&utm_campaign=3a2d135886-Europe_briefing_Jan_29_2019&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_feb55e2e23-3a2d135886-92426209.
Comment:
ReplyDeleteNote, I removed the author as the link did not lead to a human being
Here is the comment with my responses:
Q: Black Soldier Fly Larvae (hermetia illucens) are not the same as the common black fly.
A: Yes, I know this.
Q: Invertebrates (adults and larvae stages) are the primary food source of ALL wild salmon when they are in fresh or brackish water so if you are eating wild salmon you are eating maggot fed fish. Anyone who fly fishes is well aware of this.
A: Wild salmon may return as much as 6 years after their last nymph, so six years after their last ‘maggot’ as you suggest. 1. Farmed fish will be fed for their full two years with maggots, not nymphs, and then fed to a consumer. Does the consumer want to eat maggot fish? 2. A nymph is not the same thing as a maggot which eats decomposing vegetable/animal matter on land, not in the water. 3. I fly fish and am well aware of these things.
Q: Most ‘wild Alaska fish’ are farm raised in enhancement programs to the fingerling stage and released into the wild before being caught again. Up to 50% of wild salmon in Alaska are raised in this way and these wild fish consume all of the ingredients mentioned above in feed form.
A: Yes, Alaska releases billions of fry, obliterating their wild salmon genetics, disregarding that in favour of large commercial catches. If memory serves me, the catch was 247 million in 2017.
They would not consume maggots unless they climbed out of the water and ate some. Maggot feed is not in enough quantity yet to feed hatchery fry, but, in any case, they would have eaten their last ‘maggot’ as much as four years before being caught and sold to a consumer.
The issue is what a consumer thinks. I wouldn’t buy farmed fish, not because of potential maggot feed that most consumers would not want, but because of the environmental damage of in-ocean fish farms.