CSB #7: Tilapia, Feeding the Thousands (Literally)

Source: Tilapia Farm, The New York Times

(above) A tilapia farm at work in Lake Yojoa

Scholars surmise that the fish that Jesus used to feed the 5,000 would have been Tilapia. However, in modern times today, Tilapia fish are hauled out of cages teeming with the fish in Lake Yojoa. They are then converted into fillets in a cold slaughterhouse; Some arrive in the U.S. on dinner plates within 12 hours. 


Last year, Americans ate 475 million pounds of tilapia, making it the most popular farmed fish the the U.S. It is referred to in the food industry as "aquatic chicken" for its bland taste and the fact that they are easy to breed. They are the perfect factory fish; they willingly eat pellets made of corn and soy, making them cheap to breed. Although the American Heart Association recommends eating fish twice a week, tilapia has its environmental and nutritional drawbacks. 


Tilapia fish have less beneficial omega-3 fatty acids, which are basically the reason that doctors recommend eating fish. The fatty acid combinations in farmed tilapia are less healthier than that of wild tilapia, because the farmed fish are fed corn and soy while the wild tilapia eat lake plants and algae. A vast majority of the tilapia fish consumed in the U.S. are harvested from "pens" and "cages" in Latin America and Asia. Today, environmentalists argue that unregulated fish farming methods is detrimental to ecosystems in poor countries. This is because the fish are mass farmed (overpopulated) in natural lakes, and as a result, the fish waste pollutes the water. 


However, defenders state that the Aquaculture Stewardship Council is toughening regulations to make sure tilapia farms are "responsibly farmed." They also argue that tilapia farming will only rise in importance as the population rises, and more people are fed and work jobs. “There are going to be more farmed fish each year,” said Kevin Fitzsimmons, a biologist at the University of Arizona. “Think about it: if we tried to get beef from hunting, there would be a lot of hungry people.”


However, it is this rise in importance that worries many biologists. They fear that the industry will become so important, that it will outweigh caution and destroy lake habitats and leave species extinct. Dr. McCrary has spent the past decade studying how a small, short-lived tilapia farm degraded Lake Apoyo in Nicaragua. “One small cage screwed up the entire lake — the entire lake!” he said of the farm, which existed from 1995 to 2000.

Waste from the cages polluted the ecosystem, and some tilapia escaped. An aquatic plant called charra, an important food for fish, disappeared, leaving the lake a wasteland.

I think that although it may be easy to farm, the tilapia farming industry is very risky as shown by Dr. McCrary in Lake Apoyo. Also, doctors state that salmon has ten times more omega-3 fatty acids than tilapia, giving it much less nutritional value. 

Source: 

Rosenthal, Elisabeth. "Another Side of Tilapia, the Perfect Factory Fish."
     The New York Times. New York Times, 2 May 2011. Web. 7 May 2011.
     <http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/02/science/earth/
     02tilapia.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&ref=earth>.