Is fish a good alternative to meat? |
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This is an extensive article. It is structured as a route: six stops along the main line, with side tracks along the way for those who want to go deeper. How would you like to read?
The green line is the main line of the article. The yellow branches are side tracks: background you can skip without losing the thread. Click a stop or side track to go straight there; use the back button of your browser (previous page) to return here to the map. Stop 1 of 6 · A good alternative to meat? Fish: a good alternative to meat?Is fish a good alternative to meat? Many people ask themselves this question, especially when they want to eat less meat or none at all. Fish has long had the reputation of being healthier and better for the environment. In this article we look at the consequences of eating fish for people, animals and the environment. Fish is either caught in the wild or comes from a fish farm. Both have their own consequences. More and more fish is being eaten worldwide. According to the FAO, the world population ate an average of 20.7 kilos of fish and other aquatic animals per person in 2022, more than twice as much as in 1961. In the Netherlands people eat on average just over 9 kilos of cleaned fish a year, which is about 20 kilos in live weight. Stop 2 of 6 · Wild fish: far too much is caught Wild fish: far too much is caught
In 2024 the Dutch fishing fleet landed about 316 million kilos of fish, mainly herring, mackerel, horse mackerel, plaice and sole. Three quarters of this comes from large freezer trawlers that also fish far beyond the North Sea. Overfishing is a worldwide problem. As early as 2003 biologists at Dalhousie University in Canada calculated that the numbers of large predatory fish such as marlin, tuna, cod, halibut and swordfish had fallen by 90 percent in fifty years. The remaining fish are also getting smaller, because the largest ones are caught first. Some never get the chance to reproduce. Side track A · Cod and herring in the North Sea (± ½ min) Cod and herring in the North SeaIn 2003 the Dutch North Sea Foundation warned that years of heavy fishing had brought cod to the brink of disappearing from the North Sea. More than twenty years later it has still not recovered. According to the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES), the cod stock in the southern North Sea is below the critical limit, which puts reproduction at risk. The other two sub-stocks are below the sustainable level. The advice for 2026 was even postponed. It can be done differently. In the late 1970s herring had almost disappeared and it recovered after a temporary fishing ban. Plaice is also doing well now. This shows that the sea recovers when people leave it alone. Side track B · Bycatch (± ½ min) Bycatch
Stop 3 of 6 · Farmed fish Farmed fishSince 2022 more fish worldwide comes from farms than from the sea. In the Netherlands mainly eel and catfish are farmed, together a few thousand tonnes a year. This makes the Netherlands the largest producer of farmed eel and farmed catfish in Europe. In the farms the fish swim close together in tanks of filtered water, without a bottom, plants or room to migrate. The eel shows how far this goes. The European eel has been listed as critically endangered on the Red List since 2008. Eels do not reproduce in captivity: every farmed eel started life as a glass eel caught in the wild. Farming eels therefore still takes animals away from an endangered species. Side track C · Fish for fish (± ½ min) Fish for fishFarmed fish need to eat too. For a long time a large part of the feed for farmed fish consisted of fishmeal and fish oil, made from wild-caught fish such as sand eel, sprat and anchovy. In the past more than three tonnes of wild fish were processed to produce one tonne of salmon. The share of fishmeal in the feed has since fallen, but it has mainly been replaced by soya. Fish farming therefore only partly solves the problem of empty seas and moves part of it to the fields. Fish farms also produce manure. Research in Norway showed early on that salmon farms in open net pens are a major source of phosphate and nitrogen. On top of that come diseases and sea lice, which also spread to wild salmon. Stop 4 of 6 · Pain, fear and stress Pain, fear and stress in fishCan fish experience pain, fear and stress? That question largely determines how we treat fish. Pain is a subjective experience and cannot be proven beyond doubt in any animal, not even in a dog. It can, however, be made plausible that an animal feels pain. Three criteria are used for this:
Fish meet all three. In 2003 researchers in Scotland showed that trout have pain receptors. Trout that were injected with bee venom or acetic acid in their lips started to behave differently: they rubbed their lips against the bottom and ate less. Since then the evidence has only become stronger. In 2024 hundreds of scientists signed the New York Declaration on Animal Consciousness, which states that conscious experience in fish is a realistic possibility that we must take into account. As early as 2002 the Dutch government acknowledged in its policy paper "The value of fish" that welfare requirements for fish were needed, especially for catching and killing. In 2003 the Dutch Council on Animal Affairs stated that fish, like other vertebrates, experience pain, fear and stress and should therefore not be treated differently in law. For Animal Freedom this evidence is welcome but not decisive. A fish also has a right to freedom and it does not have to prove that first. Stop 5 of 6 · How fish are killed How fish are killedThe way fish are killed largely determines how much they suffer. For mammals and birds there are strict rules for stunning and killing. For fish there are hardly any: the European slaughter regulation only requires that avoidable pain be spared. Since July 2018 farmed eel in the Netherlands must be stunned before slaughter. That obligation does not apply to other farmed fish (catfish, tilapia and turbot) nor to the billions of wild-caught fish. Below are the main killing methods. SuffocationContrary to what many people think, a fish does not die quickly out of the water. Herring only suffocate after about 35 minutes, cod and whiting after an hour. Sole and plaice take even longer: they are only dead after about four hours. Gutting aliveIn gutting, the fish is cut open alive to remove the guts and blood. This does not kill the fish immediately. Herring, sole and dab can live for another 10, 30 and 35 minutes respectively, plaice up to 50 minutes. Often the fish are first left to suffocate in the air for 7 to 20 minutes and are then gutted alive. Side track D · The eel (± ½ min) The eelIn the neck cut the eel gets a cut behind the head, which severs the spinal cord. The oxygen supply to the brain remains intact. If the animal is then cut open, this possibly happens while it is conscious. Even worse was the salt bath: salt was sprinkled over the living eel to remove its slime layer. The salt affects the skin like burns and damages the gills. The eel makes violent movements for a long time to escape it. This method is now banned in the Netherlands. Yet in 2020 it turned out that some eel farmers were still slaughtering the animals without stunning. Sometimes fish are not even killed. In shark finning the fins were cut off and the living shark was thrown back. Since 2013 sharks in the European Union must be landed with their fins attached, but worldwide the practice continues. Stop 6 of 6 · Conclusion ConclusionIs fish a good alternative to meat? For the environment fish is often somewhat less damaging than meat, because fish do not have to keep their bodies warm and need less feed. But that is where the advantage ends. Far more fish is caught than the sea can bear. Farmed fish live without freedom and partly depend on wild fish and soya. And fish feel pain, while they get less protection when they are caught and killed than any other animal. For those who care about animals, fish is not a good alternative to meat. A plant-based alternative is the obvious choice. Fish do not make the omega-3 fatty acids they are known for themselves: they get them from algae. Algae oil is therefore a good source without fish. Side track E · Health (± ½ min) HealthOily fish such as herring, mackerel, sardine and salmon is known for the omega-3 fatty acids EPA and DHA. These are good for the heart and blood vessels. The Dutch Nutrition Centre therefore advises eating fish once a week. Fish also contains unwanted substances. PFAS in particular are found in relatively high amounts in fish. The Dutch National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (RIVM) found them in both oily and lean fish. The Nutrition Centre advises against regularly eating freshwater fish you have caught yourself in Dutch waters. If you do not eat fish, you can get omega-3 from algae oil, linseed and walnuts. Side track F · Labels (± ½ min) LabelsFish products must state the species, where the fish comes from and whether it was caught in the wild or farmed. Labels say something about the fishery or the farm, but little about the welfare of the fish itself.
End of the route More informationMore about angling can be read on Not on the hook. Sources: FAO, The State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture 2024; Netherlands Fish Marketing Board (fish consumption); Wageningen Economic Research, fisheries figures (landings 2024); ICES advice 2025 and 2026; fishcount.org.uk (numbers of fish caught); Myers and Worm, Nature (2003); Sneddon et al., Proceedings of the Royal Society (2003); New York Declaration on Animal Consciousness (2024); Dutch Ministry of Agriculture, "The value of fish" (2002); Dutch Council on Animal Affairs (2003); Vissenbescherming (stunning of farmed eel, 2020); RIVM and Dutch Nutrition Centre (PFAS). This article is based on an article by René Houkema (2003) and was rewritten and updated in 2026. |
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Worldwide fisheries and aquaculture together produced 223 million tonnes in 2022. For the first time more than half of all aquatic animals came from farms. The number of individual fish caught in the wild every year is almost beyond imagination: an estimated 1.1 to 2.2 trillion. That is far more animals than all farm animals in the world put together.