Farmed fish or wild fish?

Farmed fish or wild fish: which to choose to fully enjoy the precious nutritional virtues of this food? The answer to this question requires a prior examination of aquaculture techniques, a sector that is now essential in the global food economy. These "fish factories", in fact, churn out adult specimens at unsustainable rates for their natural habitats, thus managing to satisfy the huge international demands.

Often, the farmed fish are found in an environment so crowded that they have a lower volume of water compared to a normal bathtub. The close contact between the various specimens and the shocks against the cages can cause small wounds to the fins and to the tail, increasing the susceptibility of the organisms to epidemic diseases, to the point of causing premature death. The spread of infections and infestations is also favored by the crowding of the tanks. Consequently, to stem these phenomena, aquaculture technicians are forced to add antibiotics and chemicals to the water in the tanks.

The diet - mainly based on vegetable flours such as soy - reduces the concentration of mineral salts and precious omega-three (especially in the meat of salmon and other carnivores), while increasing the omega-six fraction. Thus one of the best nutritional qualities of this food is reduced.

Animalists, on the other hand, point out that a fish forced to live in very small spaces certainly cannot be happy with its condition, which gives it stress, frustration and suffering. This phenomenon could cause some laughter among the less sensitive readers, but which in any case negatively affects the quality of the meat.

Should farmed fish therefore be avoided? Of course not. The oxygenation and water purification systems, together with health checks, are able to significantly reduce the severity of the problems exposed. On the other hand, even the farmers themselves have every interest in protecting the health of the animals; an insufficient oxygenation of the water, for example, negatively affects the growth and appetite rhythms of the specimens. Vaccines, for their part, have contributed significantly to preventing serious infectious diseases and reducing the use of antibiotics and chemotherapy. Also the controls by the appointed bodies represent a further guarantee for the consumer. Obviously this does not prevent unscrupulous breeders from using unapproved antibiotics or growth promoters; this phenomenon, moreover, is also widespread among livestock breeders.

Ultimately, the difference between a wild and a farmed fish is the same that separates a free-range chicken raised on the ground from a battery-grown one. Obviously the wild fish of sea or fresh water is to be preferred, even if this choice is partly penalized by its greater susceptibility to the accumulation of heavy metals, especially if it is a large predator caught in contaminated waters.