Test-tube meat

Just over the horizon is a new product that can help feed the world while simultaneously reducing the scary-huge carbon footprint of our food.

It's test-tube meat. Or at least right now it's test-tube meat, soon it'll be bioreactor meat once it's scaled-up to industrial production.

Test tube meat can now be grown with less than half the energy of conventional beef production (growing actual cows), and about 4% of the greenhouse gas production. This is a very good thing. Still not as good as being a vegetarian, but better than any current meat product.

Another possible use of artificial meat (needs a better name, don't you think?) is aquaculture. With just a bit of artificial meat in the feed, fish farms can grow great fish with a lower resource demand than conventional fish farming.

And before you think the "yuck" factor is too big for this to work, just remember that we once thought test-tube babies were wierd but now people don't even blink at in vitro fertilization.

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Seafood sustainability measured in anchovy equivalents

There's a new battle that may change how you view seafood sustainability. Is it possible that the best and highest use of anchovies is feeding farmed fish? Maybe.

Kona Blue and Food & Water Watch are slugging it out over the sustainability of kona kampachi, thanks to a new analysis that says farmed fish are more sustainable than wild-caught fish.

Author Neil Sims of Kona Blue is sticking his neck out with this analysis, but that's nothing new. As a fish-farming entrepreneur with green credibility, he's successfully working what some think is an impossible divide. Now he's challenging critics and trying to undermine what he calls the "widely-promoted misconception that eating wild-caught fish is better for the oceans than eating farmed seafood."

Sims estimates that "on a global basis, sustainably farmed fish may represent around 60 times more efficient use of anchovy and other baitfish resources than wild fish." As a result, he asserts that "fish farming is a better and higher use of these resources than reliance on commercial exploitation of wild predatory fish species."

On the other side of the battle is Food & Water Watch, the consumer organization that challenged the "good alternative" rating given to kona kampachi by the Monterey Aquarium's Seafood Watch. Part of their mission is to "challenge the corporate control and abuse of our food and water" and they advise seafood consumers to "in general, choose wild-caught" over farmed fish. Not surprisingly, they're not impressed with Sims' analysis.

Sims makes some good points in his defense of farming predatory fish. If we're going to eat predatory fish, then it's worth thinking about the "anchovy equivalents" that go into farmed fish vs. wild-caught fish.

Also posted at SeafoodSource.com under "blogs"

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Fish farming entrepreneur

Here's a story about a young man with a passion for farming fish. Love him or hate him, Brian O'Hanlon is the kind of person who has the energy to conceive of a future that's different than the status quo.

Is he a friend or enemy of conservation? Some who hate fish farming would call him an enemy because of his zeal for fish farms. But I like anyone who can envision a new future, and I hope his energy helps to make a better world in our shared future.

I think fish farming is a key part of our ocean future, and we need to learn how to do it and do it well. That will require energetic entrepreneurs like Mr. O'Hanlon.

And I'm dying to know, who's that ZZ Top character in the background? Some sort of fish guru?

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Egg-laying boys

Watch out fellow males, you too could be recruited for a dastardly experiment.

A fish researcher has created egg-laying male bluegills by giving the boys estrogen. Then he uses normal males to fertilize the male-produced eggs. The offspring? So-called "super males" that have two y chromosomes and can be counted on to mate with normal females to produce only male offspring.

Why? Because fish farmers prefer to raise male bluegills--they're twice as big as females and thus more profitable.

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