From all–you–can–eat popcorn shrimp at chain restaurants, to bite-sized maki rolls at trendy sushi bars, to salmon steaks on the backyard barbecue ––  Americans eat 25 percent more seafood than they did 20 years ago, an average of 16 pounds a year.

But many of these fish-lovers would be horrified to learn that huge quantities of fish and shrimp are now being grown in giant nets, cages, and ponds where antibiotics, hormones and pesticides mingle with disease and waste. These industrialized “aquaculture facilities” are rapidly replacing natural methods of fishing that have been used to catch fresh, wild seafood for millennia.

Just as multinational corporations have forever changed the way food is grown on land –– to the detriment of public health, the environment, local communities and food quality itself –– they are poised to do the same at sea. The identical factory-farm model is being adopted for aquaculture: growing food as cheaply as possible using toxic chemicals and other harmful techniques, packaging it in enormous bulk, and shipping it to distant grocery stores and restaurants all around the world.

You can learn more about the problems with offshore fish farming, inland fish farms that are doing it right, and what our decision makers in Washington should be doing by signing on the Food & Water Watch Fish Campaign email list.
 

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