Why I stopped eating fish (again).

Why I stopped eating fish (again).

At the age of 13, Kia became a vegetarian, but 15 years later she started eating fish again. Here she reflects on why this decision was wrong

There is an inherent hypocrisy in what I do for a living. On the one hand, I write about the state of the planet, calling for tourism caps and addressing extinction tourism, but on the other hand, I continue to fly knowing that it is the worst way to travel in terms of CO2 emissions.

I console myself that I don't eat meat, a worse offender when it comes to emissions, but I do eat fish and dairy. It's tempting to say, "Well, fish isn't as bad as meat" - and that may be true from an ecological perspective, but what about morals?

The environmental question is tricky and complicated, but the moral one – killing animals that we don't need to eat in affluent societies – is, or at least should be, simpler.

I came into contact with the slaughter of animals relatively early. When I was 13, I visited my ancestral homeland in Bangladesh and witnessed two cows being killed. As the stomachs were removed from the carcasses, I vowed never to eat meat again, partly out of moral objection and partly out of abject horror.

I took it for granted that I should also give up fish and so, to my mother's great despair, I became a vegetarian.

For a Muslim child growing up in East London in the 1990s, this was almost unheard of. I remember sitting at numerous weddings with platters full of tandoori chicken and barrels of lamb curry and asking a waiter to bring me some dhal. Our culture revolves heavily around meat and for a long time people thought I was an oddity.

Nevertheless, I remained vegetarian for the next 15 years. However, at age 28, I started eating fish again, mostly for convenience while traveling. Even in developed countries like France and Argentina, restaurants often didn't have a single vegetarian option, in this case I chose fish.

Slowly, fish crept back into my diet and I sometimes even found myself choosing it with a vegetarian alternative. I didn't travel at all in 2020, but I still ate fish once or twice a month.

Andrii Koval/ShutterstockFish crept back into Kia's diet

Then two things happened last week that changed my mind (again). First I read We love Animals – so why do we treat them so bad?, an insightful article by Henry Mance, editor-in-chief of the FT. Second, I listened to the podcast Seaspiracy Controverse: Should We Stop Eating Fish? and was completely unconvinced by the counterpoint.

Mance's article was particularly touching. In it he explains: "Love for animals is one of the fundamental values ​​of our society. Rational thinking is another. The way we treat animals does not fit with any of these values; it is guided by tradition and inertia."

Basically, we eat meat because we always have and don't bother to change.

In criticizing vegetarians, Mance says: "Don't think that vegetarians are deforesting the Amazon. Three-quarters of soybean production goes into animal feed; less than 5% goes into tofu and soy milk. It's simply more efficient to eat the beans directly than to raise animals. The expansion of agriculture is the single biggest force driving wild animals to extinction."

MyImages – Micha/ShutterstockFish are often dragged in trawl nets for hours

About fish, he writes: "Then there are fish that we kill by the trillions every year. Scientific studies now strongly suggest that they feel pain. But animal protection laws largely do not restrict fishing in the sea: fish are often dragged for hours in trawl nets or suffocated from the water."

I remember reading an article a few years ago about an aquarium in South Carolina that was home to an incredibly old cobia. The fish was believed to be blind and resting at the bottom of its large tank. At feeding time, a smaller, younger cobia swam to the bottom of the tank, nudging the older cobia and leading it to the surface. Once they were done eating, the young fish led the older ones back to the bottom. This happened every day. Can we really say that these two creatures were not sentient?

After reading Mance's article, I decided to stop eating fish. Unfortunately, that doesn't mean I get a free ticket. Mance writes, "Vegetarians generally view dairy as a guilt-free choice because it doesn't seem to involve death. But dairy involves cows being impregnated, immediately separated from their calves, and then milked for our consumption. We break the bond between mother and calf because we like the taste."

The moral imperative is clear: we in affluent societies should stop consuming animals and animal products. Personally, I'm not ready to give up cheese and chocolate, so what's the solution? Is there one there?

I think writer Ezra Klein’s “Imperfect Veganism” offers a good option. According to this model, Klein follows a vegan diet at home, but accepts that he is vegetarian when traveling or at certain meals with certain people. This builds failure into the system and ensures that if you fail, you don't slip back into full carnivoreism. Rather, you book it as a day off and continue to eat vegan.

I've heard so many people say that history will judge us harshly for how we treat animals, but those same people also say, "But I can't stop eating meat," just like I say, "I can't give up cheese and chocolate."

When we look at the most heinous atrocities in human history, we find it difficult to understand how good, normal people came to accept them. To understand this, we just have to look within. We know, as they do, that horror is taking place. And we, like them, choose to keep calm and carry on.

In How to Love Animals in a Human-Shaped World, Henry Mance embarks on a personal quest to discover whether there is a fairer way to live alongside other species. He goes to work in a slaughterhouse and on a farm to examine the realities of eating meat, meeting chefs, farmers, activists, philosophers, scientists and technology visionaries who are redefining how we think about animals.

Cover photo: Rudmer Zwerver/Shutterstock

      .