GEN275 The realities of aquaculture [the industrial farm equivalent for raising sea animals in confinement] must make us cringe as Jews, we who are commanded not to cause undue suffering to animals.  Farm-raised fish live in water that is so fouled and crowded that it makes it hard for them to breathe, and they cannibalize one another at a high rate.  They have nutritional deficiencies that weaken their immune systems, and they are slaughtered in horrible, inhumane ways.  Fish raised through aquaculture live in terrible suffering and die the same way. To combat the illnesses—parasitic bacteria, rickettsia, lesion—that farm-raised fish contract, producers introduce chemicals and medications  Millions of other fish destined for sale in the United States are raised with chemicals and drugs not approved for use in this country. Yet, as we have seen with Chilean fish producers, devastating viruses still spread, killing millions of fish each year.  When we purchase most farm-raised fish, we are violating the values of both bal tashchit and tzaar baalei chaim by supporting an industry in which large-scale death rates and animal suffering are inherent in nearly all methods of aquaculture.  The first value is drawn from a commandment given to us in Deuteronomy 20 not to wantonly destroy God’s creation, and the second value is rooted in the environment from Exodus 23 to prevent suffering to animals. Sadly, wild-caught fish are hardly a more humane alternative. While they live freely before they are caught, unfettered by cramped and filthy conditions, the methods of catching the sea animals we crave-trawling, longline fishing, purse seines—also kill millions of sharks, marlines, sea turtles, albatross, dolphins, and whales each year.  This kind of ‘scorched-earth style of ‘harvesting’ sea animals,” where 80 to 90 percent of what fisheries catch –so-called by-catch—are thrown back, dead, into the ocean, goes against the value of bal tachchit in a way that we can no longer ignore as people of faith.  This knowing wastefulness is akin to Maimonides’s teaching with regard to cutting down fruit trees: “We do not cut down fruit trees outside the [besieged] city, nor do we take away from them the water channel so that they may dry up, as it says, “Do not destroy its trees” [Deuteronomy 20:19], and anyone who cuts down [such a tree] gets lashes.  And [this rule is] not only during a siege, but at all places; anyone who cuts down a fruit tree in a manner of destruction is lashed.” Mishneh Torah, Hilchot M’lachim 6:8  We cannot ignore the parallel between the cutting down of fruit trees in pursuit of a city and the cutting down of innumerable species in pursuit of the one or two most desirable ones. Maimonides makes this extrapolation explicit when he teaches further, “And it is not only trees, but anyone who breaks vessels, tears clothing, tears down a building, plugs a spring, or wastes food in a manner of destruction, transgresses ‘Do not destroy.’” (ibid.)  When we consume wild-caught salmon or tuna, we are, at the same time, participants in a system that is wantonly destroying the diversity and vibrancy of God’s creation. Furthermore, nearly one-third of wild-caught fish in the world are reduced to fish meal and fed to farmed fish, cattle, and pigs.  Using fish meal to feed farm-raised fish is, as Mark Bittman writes, “astonishingly inefficient. Approximately three kilograms of forage fish go to produce one kilogram of farmed salmon; the ratio for cod is five to one; and tuna … [the] ratio is 20 to 1.” Surely we as Jews, who are commanded not to seethe a calf its [sic] mother’s milk Exodus 23:19, we are commanded to shoo away the mother bird when we take her eggs Deuteronomy 22:6-7, must learn from these values that to feed a fish with fish meal should violate any holistic sense of kashrut.  These fishing systems are not only ecologically troublesome; they are also cruel in the various methods by which hundreds of different species are crushed together to die slowly over hours.  If kosher slaughter of farm animals is meant to help them die quickly and painlessly, the methods of fish slaughter in wild-caught fisheries result in the opposite effect—slow, painful, brutal deaths.  Even if Jewish tradition says little or nothing about how fish should be slaughtered, surely we should extrapolate from what it does say about slaughtering land animals to know that fish should not be made to suffer in any of these ways.  So what is a Jew to do? Foer and others advocate that we eat no fish at all, which is certainly a legitimate option, and perhaps the best one. God made Adam and Eve vegetarians, and perhaps this is the Jewish ideal. (By Joel Mosbacher, "FISH: A Complex Issue") SACTAB 190-2