Why Not Fish?

Morality is more than simple math

We are often asked why One Step for Animals does not focus on fish. There are several reasons.

Preface: Suffering is neither equal nor universal

Whenever there is an article that says fish feel pain, it is forwarded to us by many people. The assumption is that any particular "fish feel pain" article is definitive.

But of course, any claim of animal pain is going to circulate in the vegan community. However, studies like these don't make the rounds:

Fish do not feel pain and its implications for understanding phenomenal consciousness

This is not to make a factual claim one way or another - just a note that there are arguments "on the other side" [sic]. No one should claim absolute certainty.

OTOH, from this very long discussion of eating animals; note: "We think it is reasonable to say that broiler chickens exist in a state worse than death."

Again: I'm not making a statement about whether fish have the subjective experience of suffering. I'm just pointing out that there are good-faith questions about what creatures have conscious experience.

There are also questions about the extent to which those experiences matter in relation to the suffering of others. (More on this below.)

These are just several considerations we should keep in mind when deciding how to spend our limited resources.

If I had to pick one lesson I've learned in the past 57 years, it might be to be less certain and more curious. (As anyone who has read Losing My Religions knows, I have been very, very wrong in the past.)

Why Not Fish? (originally from 2016)

The argument we get regularly is that the number of fish killed every year is higher than chickens. (We are, of course, heartened when people are concerned about numbers at all, as opposed to only working on things that they personally find most compelling; e.g., cute mammals.)

Several factors have led One Step for Animals to not prioritize fish. Here are some of the factors, in abbreviated form:

1. We don't care about numbers, we care about suffering.

2. Many "fish" that are killed (just based on numbers) aren't sentient / don't suffer (clams, oysters).

2a. Relatedly, the level of suffering matters, not just numbers. To a first approximation, the less neural complexity, the lower the level of maximum suffering. That is: the ability to suffer does not appear suddenly and fully.

Consider, for example, the growth of a human individual. A fertilized egg can't suffer. After a certain level of neural complexity develops, a hint of sentience would arise. That level increases as the nervous system grows and matures.

In this sense, a blastocyst is not a shrimp is not a chicken is not a boy.

3. Most vertebrate fish killed are wild fish. [edit: See, for instance, this graph, which compares wild-caught fish with farmed “fish, molluscs, crustaceans and aquatic plants.” Literally comparing sea apples and orange roughy.]

Wild-living individuals would suffer greatly from their "natural" death if they aren’t caught. A "natural" death of predation, disease, or starvation, may actually be worse than a death by suffocation or decapitation. So catching a wild fish doesn't clearly increase the suffering in the world.

4. Thus, it could well be that only farmed vertebrate fish add suffering to the world when people choose to eat them. [edit: For a different, more mathy take, please see this.]

Chart by Ben Davidow

5. The individuals who seem to be most likely to change their diets - youngish women - don't eat much fish. Elwen notes they never saw their high school or college friends eating fish. Always chickens.

Advocacy shouldn’t be about being right. It should be about actually helping.

The numbers and the suffering are only two of the three factors we should consider. Tractability is also key: will our advocacy actually have an impact?

Do we think people will go from a standard omnivorous diet to caring about and ceasing to eat fish?

At this time, we believe that when advocates start saying things like "people eat 500 fish/ year," we are distracting from where our efforts can, at the margin, have the biggest impact on actually reducing suffering.

And, of course, every time we add something else to our ask (“stop eating chicken .. and fish ... and eggs ... and pork ...”) we undermine the point of having a single, reasonable, sustainable, impactful action.

One Step for Animals’ approach isn't based on what is "right" or "consistent" or "popular." (Or the biggest “expected value.”) We are simply trying to shape our advocacy such that it can have the biggest possible impact in the real world.