As a flatlander, I don’t know very much about oceans. I’ve stood next to them, even waded in, and I’ve admired them from a bluff and been grateful to stay above them while in a plane, but I don’t claim any deep knowledge of how oceans work. So it was a shock when I learned that oceans are experiencing the same kind of pollution from industrial animal agriculture that we experience here on the flatlands of the midwest. A nonprofit group, Don’t Cage Our Oceans, calls these intensive fin-fish operations Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs), just like we’ve been fighting in our neighborhoods.
How to describe these CAFOs? Imagine giant basketball hoops floating in the ocean, with the baskets hanging down and tied at the bottom. Each basket can be as big as four football fields and as deep as 100 meters, or 300 feet. Each net is filled with millions of baby fish that, of course, grow to be big. Or die. PETA estimates that as many as 40% of the fish confined in one of these nets will die before reaching harvest level. When diseases break out, the fish can be treated with antibiotics or other medications which, of course, pass through them into the water. And, the antibiotics are passed on to the eaters. Us.
The fish raised in these nets are such things as grouper, almaco jack, tuna, arctic char and cod. Most of the fish in your grocery store probably come from this system. These animals are being raised on the same industrial feeds as hogs, chickens and beef in confinement. Meaning feeds made of corn and soy and some nutrients, pest controls and medications that might be added. So the same industrial pollutants—herbicides and insecticides—that find their way from CAFOs and feed lots into our creeks and rivers are finding their ways into the oceans.
Other marine wildlife can feel the impact of these CAFOs. The caged fish, which may be especially bred to endure the hazards of confinement, escape and breed with wild fish, changing the gene pools. Coral reefs can receive an overabundance of pollution from the confinements, further endangering reefs already weakened by the changing climate. Another problem is that the nets that surround the fish cafos are dangerous to marine mammals—seals, porpoises, whales and the like. Those animals are often found entangled in the nets.
But, I hear you say, the oceans are practically infinite. And the CAFOs are invisible from shore, being suspended in the water about three miles out. In the Gulf of Mexico, these facilities are sometimes closer to shore. If you think about the algae blooms in the Gulf because of midwestern chemicals flowing down the Mississippi River, you can imagine that the fish CAFOs add to this problem. One study found that algal blooms can reach as deep as 65 feet around one of these netted CAFOs.
Like inland CAFOs, the floating CAFOs benefit from government help. During the Trump administration, in May 2020, Trump signed executive order 13921 to encourage the Army Corps of Engineers to more quickly permit these facilities. The order pretends to help the fin-fish sector by allowing agencies to disregard established safeguards, like the National Environmental Policy Act and Endangered Species Act. As we’ve seen on land-based CAFOs, such obvious safety measures as treatment of waste or reducing chemical use or even the spread of disease among the animals are ignored.
As we’ve seen with land-based CAFOs, panels packed with industry insiders willfully ignore anything that will slow the process or create expense. Under 13921, the permits would run for 25 years with very little oversight. And a corporation (think: Tyson, Cargill) could receive a blanket permit for any place they’d like to put a CAFO, in any ocean around the United States, with no environmental impact statement.
The lack of environmental impact statements harms us in many ways: First, it allows the fish CAFOs to pollute and, second, it allows pollutants to get into the fish products that go to consumers. As we know, the oceans have been used as dumps for many types of excess pollutants. The floating islands of plastic are a problem that allow plastic bits to get into fish sold as food. Over the decades, chemicals like DDT have been dumped in the ocean and also can find their way into the food supply.
Fortunately, a coalition of organizations is fighting back. Besides family fishermen, there are sport fishing businesses, tourism businesses, food safety organizations and environmentalists are working together to urge President Joe Biden to revoke 13921. And other groups have formed to support independent fishermen, some who are re-building the fish canneries and freezers that once dotted ocean towns to ship product inland. We’ll soon see more of these sustainably harvested products in our grocery stores.
Where a flatlander like me can buy them.
Margot Ford McMillen farms near Fulton, Mo., and co-hosts “Farm and Fiddle” on sustainable ag issues on KOPN 89.5 FM in Columbia, Mo. She also is a co-founder of CAFOZone.com, a website for people who are affected by concentrated animal feeding operations. Her latest book is “The Golden Lane: How Missouri Women Gained the Vote and Changed History.” Email: margotmcmillen@gmail.com.
From The Progressive Populist, July 1-15, 2022
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