I don’t know if this has any relevance, but fish is not included as meat in the Jewish prohibition on eating meat with milk.
Well you can count the bulk of salmon available in stores out if you want a low-cost “naturally produced” food source. Farmed salmon out produce wild-caught salmon nowadays, and if you’re eating atlantic salmon practicaly anywhere, it’s almost certainly farmed. Until recently I was working in the salmon farming industry, and beleive me they live a very modern high-density production life; and the pollution and disease caused is quite contraversial. Fish farming is less regulated than other types of farming at the moment, and there’s talk that all the (expensive) fish meal for the feed from south america is having a serious impact on those wild stocks. That’s just from one species… unfortunately researchers are climbing over each other to figure out how to farm other fish like halibut and cod, so the farming trend is only going to grow. Those inocent, pure, little scaley creatures are fast becoming just like all our other farmed foods. (although wild-caught fish certainly suffer even more - they aren’t killed when caught, just dumped on the deck and (hopefully) straight into freezers where they either suffocate or freeze to death and remain in the boat’s hold for a week or two).
Then again, if one is of the ridiculous opinion that anything non-human doesn’t have the ability to suffer or that a snake can feel pain but a salamander can’t based on supposedly “strong facts” that nobody ever gets around to presenting, they’re probly not too concerned with the other ethical issues such as cost or pollution either.
I beleive that fish not being considered meat has more to do with religious convictions or traditions as other posters have mentioned as oppoesd to scientific or ethical points.
I don’t know about the religious basis for this,but I do know that fish and fowl are considered ‘white meat’ as opoosed to red meat due to the lower fatty tissue and cholesterol.Fish is also healthier than red meat,although IMHO,no meat of any kind is the healthiest.(OK,OK,just my opinion-I don’t want to open a can of worms)
As for eating plants and causing death-firstly,plants have no nervous systems.
Secondly,the plant can regenerate even if you kill/eat 90% of it.The animal cannot.It’s dead,it’s dead.Milk and unfertilized eggs are the only exceptions in the animal kingdom which is why some religions don’t prohibit them.
Thirdly,a pig grown for slaughter probably eats as many plants as fifteen people in the same period.
denial, ignorance, semantics, unquestioned traditions
grotty = wretchedly shabby : of poor quality
Yeah, that is exactly what I feel about a New York Strip Streak or even a nice juicy hamburger.