Talking About Sea Animals in Vegan Leaflets
Articles and Media Coverage From Animal Defenders of Westchester (ADOW)

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Talking About Sea Animals in Vegan Leaflets

FROM On Their Own Terms: Animal Liberation for the 21st Century
2016

Excerpted from On Their Own Terms: Animal Liberation for the 21st Century, Lee Hall and Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson, available for purchase on GoodReads.com

Our use of aquatic animals is taken for granted and has repeatedly led to collapses of bio-communities.

Vegan leaflets need to get really serious about this. Especially as many self-identified vegetarians still see nothing deal-breakingly wrong with eating sea animals.

Because shoppers believe the humane and sustainable seafood myths, a leaflet's readers need to rethink the industry that takes living beings out of their waters and packages them as groceries, and the charity-industrial complex that keeps these animals moving from their habitat to dinner tables worldwide.

Nothing has presented more confusion than “sustainable seafood” marketing concepts

And these promotions keep spreading.

WWF (formerly the World Wildlife Fund) tells us we need to buy sea animals to save them, and advertises approved fishmongers on a website for shoppers.
Greenpeace gives people an interactive shopping list for buying sea animals at the customers' preferred chain of grocery stores.

Aquaculture is projected to double by the middle of the century, so fish are, for all practical purposes, factory-farmed. Often displayed as sustainable, tilapia are fed corn and soy—the same stuff moving through the global chicken feed market. The beings then defecate, in mass quantities, directly into the waters.

Divestment needs to happen

We need to get out of the oceans, and the vegan principle will see to this.

The large “green” non-profits could facilitate an opting-out in affluent societies in which they have the most influence. What they’ve produced so far is a good bit of malarkey.

And worse.

Before the pressure to adopt standards like those of WWF’s Aquaculture Stewardship Council, Vietnam’s catfish farmers used home-made feeds that included farm by-products. But now, they import huge amounts of soy meal, to pass European and U.S. retail food safety regulations.

“Wild-caught” is no moral bargain

“Certified sustainable” swordfish might come from long-line boats that snag sharks and endangered turtles. Add in the bogus claims from exploitive corporations with human rights violations in their supply chain. Their so-called "Sea to Table" marketing lies have fooled celebrity chefs and university policy wonks alike.

Collectively, U.S. residents eat more than 100 billion fish and shellfish each year. Opt out, and we can individually spare more than 225 fish each year—the number is so high because fish farming uses large number of fish to feed to other fish—and more than 150 shrimp and other shellfish each year.

Encourage respect for the natural lives of the beings who inhabit seas, lakes and rivers. Their life experiences and evolution belong to them.

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