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Nov 28, 2019

Jim Anderson: Fillets might replace drumsticks at Thanksgiving in future

While you enjoy a turkey feast for Thanksgiving, public scientists are thinking about what’ll be on your holiday table 20 years from now. There’s a good chance it’ll be something other than turkey.

I predict that much of it is going to come from farming the sea. Aquaculture — fish farming — now accounts for more than half of the world’s seafood. In the United States, four of the top five seafoods consumed — shrimp, salmon, tilapia and catfish — are dominated by fish farming.

U.S. shrimp consumption per person has more than doubled in the past three decades, salmon consumption has gone up five times and tilapia was not even in the market three decades ago. But we haven’t seen anything yet.

Aquaculture is an efficient way to raise food. Anyone who’s sprinkled fish food in an aquarium can understand that you don’t need truckloads of food to grow fish. They need water to swim, but not to drink, so they’re not a drain on water resources.  Read the article.