Episode 35 - Eating Insects

Kristen is on vacation, so Kyla took the reigns on this look into the future of eating insects. This was a topic we had discussed when originally brainstorming for the show, and we’re excited to finally eat our cricket powder.

A lot of the information for this episode was taken from a 2013 paper by the FAO, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization. It’s called Edible Insects: Future Prospects for Food and Feed Security. Before this report came out, there was very little conversation happening on the subject, so this kick-started the discussion.

History of Eating Insects

The practice of eating insects is called entomophagy, and we’ve been doing it since prehistoric times. Shoutout to the wiki article on entomophagy which is extremely well written. I recommend checking it out as a starting point for those who want to learn more after the episode.

Around 2 billion people eat insects around the world, mostly in Central and South America, Africa, Asia, and even a bit in Australia and New Zealand, although it’s less common from my experience. It’s more taboo in western culture, but it shouldn’t be! It’s slowly becoming more acceptable in western cultures to eat insects, and in Seattle toasted grasshoppers are a big hit at Mariners baseball games.

There are about 2000 arthropods globally that are known to be safe for human consumption. Arthropods are invertebrate animals with an exoskeleton, segmented body, and paired jointed appendages. The category includes insects, arachnids, myriapods (centipedes, millipedes etc), and crustaceans. So if you’re eating crab and lobster, you’re already partway there. Crickets are so similar to shellfish they put allergy warnings on cricket powder saying people with shellfish allergies may react to cricket as well.

It’s kind of funny that we eat lobster, which used to be fed to servants and prison inmates until rules were passed to prevent something considered so cruel. Perhaps we’ll soon be there with bugs!

So why don’t we eat them in the west? A New York Times article suggests that because Europe spent so much of it’s history covered in ice, it only has about 2% of the world’s edible insects and they don’t get nearly as big as they do in warmer climates, so they were never worth hunting. We associate them with things that are dirty or decaying or carrying disease. Also the bible says not to do it (Leviticus 11:41 ‘And every creeping thing that creeps on the earth shall be an abomination. It shall not be eaten.’) so that’s that. Early explorers saw people eating insects in different countries and viewed it as animal-like. As Europeans took over large parts of the world, they took the idea of not eating insects with them, so we can thank colonialism for setting us way back on this one. Missionaries were especially influential in Africa and changed the way people viewed eating insects.

To be fair, it’s not like we’re super weird for not eating insects. Out of 800,000 arthropods, only 2000 are edible. But that same article says we can expect rapid growth in demand in the west for insects in the next few years, which is promising because there’s lots of great reasons to eat bugs!

Surprise, we already eat bugs!

Each year we eat 2lbs of insects! What?? They wind up in food like peanut butter, spices, or canned fruit and veg. The US FDA allows certain quantities to pass into the food Americans buy. “For every ¼ cup of cornmeal, the FDA allows an average of one or more whole insects, two or more rodent hairs and 50 or more insect fragments, or one or more fragments of rodent dung.” - CNN

Not to mention honey. A teaspoon of honey represents the lifetime regurgitation of 50 bees. So we’re already consuming hidden insects and the byproducts of insects. Pass the cricket powder! 

What insects do people eat?

The most popular are beetles, caterpillars, bees, wasps, ants, grasshoppers, locusts, and crickets.

I saw scorpions on sticks in Beijing, and bought mealworm and cricket powder here in Canada. In Australia, on a tour I did in Darwin, ants are picked right off of trees and eaten by brave tourists. They taste citrusy and are high in vitamin C.

In Kushihara Japan there’s an annual wasp festival where wasp-hunters sell snacks like wasp mochi, chocolate wasps, and full wasp nests. It’s all considered a delicacy.

There are loads of insects to eat! Dragonflies, grubs, termites, the list goes on.

Why Eat Bugs?

Everyone who eats insects say they’re tasty. 2 billion people aren’t eating bugs because they DON’T taste good. Apparently stinkbugs taste like apples. But just as important, they’re sustainable alternatives to the meat industry.

From an article by Samuel Imathiu from the University of Agriculture and Technology, Nairobi, Kenya

“The current research evidence shows that edible insects can play a significant role in addressing food and nutrition insecurities and this should be encouraged. Scientific evidence shows that edible insects’ nutritional quality is equivalent and sometimes exceeds that of animal-based foods. This and the fact that edible insects have a faster growth rate, high food conversion efficiency and requires less resources to rear compared to livestock should make them a more attractive quality food source especially to the rural poor in the developing countries.”

Environmental Benefits

We’ve talked a lot already in previous episodes about how animal agriculture is a big culprit in climate change, but as a refresher, livestock account for 14% of global greenhouse gas emissions, and use about 70% of the world’s agricultural land. And production is expected to ramp up as global demand continues to increase. As countries become wealthier, and more urbanized, they’re meat consumption grows. So, fighting climate change means overhauling our current food system. Eating insects can help in a few ways.

1) Insects can be fed on food industry by-products, which helps reduce waste and environmental contamination. This would be more for the insects being raised as feed for other animals. For people, we want to feed bugs food grade food. Or if the waste they’re eating is food waste like apple cores and melon rinds, stuff like that, then it would probably be alright for us. But this needs more study, and most of the farms I looked into feed them a grain meal. Here is a little more information than we went into on the episode.

2) Less food waste, since the whole cricket is being used. In addition, Entomo Farms (where I got my cricket powder) says their crickets’ manure and sheddings, called frass, are sold to farmers and gardeners as high quality fertilizer.

3) Insects emit fewer greenhouse gases and less ammonia than cattle or pigs. Methane, one of the worst greenhouse gases, is produced by only a few insect groups, such as termites and cockroaches. Overall, bugs produce one tenth as much methane as conventional livestock. When compared to chickens, which are greener than bigger livestock, crickets emit half as much C02 and use 25 percent less water. From the FAO paper:

4) They need less land, water, and food, and you don’t have to clear cut spaces to raise them. “Because they are cold-blooded, insects are very efficient at converting feed into protein (crickets, for example, need 12 times less feed than cattle, four times less feed than sheep, and half as much feed as pigs and broiler chickens to produce the same amount of protein)”.

As an email from Entomo Farms put it “less feed means less land, water, fertilizers, and transportation”. However, this is a little contested. When fed certain organic waste diets they’ve been found to have the same feed conversion as chickens. The feed the big farms use do make them more efficient, but everyone is still trying to figure out the best stuff to feed them.

By 2025, nearly 2 billion people are expected to be living with water scarcity, and more than half of our freshwater is being used in agriculture. 1kg of animal protein requires 5-20 times more water than 1kg of grain protein, or 100 times if you include the water required for forage and grain production to feed the animals. 1kg of beef requires 22000-43000 litres of fresh water. Cricket needs less, although the numbers are all over the place when I look it up. The highest estimates were 100-250l, but one source said 10l and another said 1l. Regardless, at the highest estimate it’s still a huge drop from the water requirements of cows.

For land, you need about 200 square metres to grow 1lb of beef, but you only need 15 square metres to grow 1lb of cricket. They could be good for vertical farming if they’re being kept in crates. One farm said 10’x3’ crates are used, but they can be kept in smaller boxes for small scale operations.

5) Insects are ready to eat way faster than other animals. They transform from larva to adults within weeks. There are loads of species of crickets, but most of them die of old age after 10 weeks, and none live more than a year.

As a bonus, all of the ways bugs are more environmentally friendly than livestock also makes them cheaper. While it’s still a little pricey to get insects here in Canada, it will become more cost effective for the consumer when everyone is eating them.

Eating insects isn’t just for people. They can be used to feed pets and livestock! We’ll probably have to start using them as our food’s food. The FAO figures worldwide production of animal feed will have to increase by as much as 70 percent to be able to feed the world by 2050, when we’ll have around 9 billion people on the planet. Switching from meat meal, fish meal, and soybean meal would help mitigate the production problems that come with those industries. We’ve talked about these problems in our milk, vegetarian, and seafood episodes in a bit more detail.

Health Benefits

Insects contain loads of protein, vitamins, minerals, and amino acids. They’re loaded with omega 3 fats, iron, magnesium, calcium, zinc, and fibre. The exoskeleton of insects actually makes their fibre content pretty high. This obviously varies widely based on the insects being eaten. There are nearly 2000 remember! But for the most part they’re hella good for you.

Entomo Farms talk about the nutrients in cricket powder on their site and use what I think is a misleading metric, which is comparing the nutrients to beef, pound for pound. My cricket powder was really expensive, and I won’t be able to eat a whole pound of cricket the same way I could eat a cheese burger. Or at least I can’t yet, I demand a cricket cheeseburger!
Although, 2tbsp have 400% of my B12 intake. So maybe I don’t need a cricket burger. But if I do want one, I just have to wait; as production ramps up, price will go down.

“Compared with mammals and birds, insects may also pose less risk of transmitting zoonotic infections to humans, livestock and wildlife, although this topic requires further research.” So mad cow and H1N1 and salmonella for example appear to be less likely to be transmitted. But because we’re not farming insects on large scale right now, more research should be done.

Pest Harvesting and Lifting People out of Poverty

From the wiki article on Entomophagy: Some researchers have proposed entomophagy as a solution to policy incoherence created by traditional agriculture, by which conditions are created which favor a few insect species, which then multiply and are termed "pests". In parts of Mexico, the grasshopper Sphenarium purpurascens is controlled by its capture and use as food. Such strategies allow decreased use of pesticide and create a source of income for farmers totaling nearly US$3000 per family. Environmental impact aside, some argue that pesticide use is inefficient economically due to its destruction of insects which may contain up to 75 percent animal protein in order to save crops containing no more than 14 percent protein.

“In the past two decades, villagers in impoverished north-eastern Thailand have started housing crickets in concrete pens in their backyards. As demand for the insects has risen, so have profits: One farmer reportedly went from selling 10 kilograms to more than two tons a day. Now around 20,000 such farms have been established, collectively earning more than $3 million a year.” - New York Times

Is It Cruel?

As Kristen has said before on the show, it’s a little tricky when you look at how one cow can feed a number of people, while a number of crickets are needed to feed one person. So is it ethical to do that?

There hasn’t been much research done on insect welfare and laws are suuuuper loose about how to raise and protect insects. The farm I bought my powder from puts the cricket welfare in their advertising, but I don’t think we should rely on the kindness of cricket farmers entirely.

It’s most likely that insects do not feel pain, but we’re not sure. So, the safest thing to do is to regulate the treatment of insects in farming. Kristen was a little skeptical of the “they probably don’t feel pain?” argument I offered, so here’s all the reading I did on it to land on that unhelpful statement.

It’s pretty easy to kill insects humanely and unlike mammals, they like living in high density situations. It’s important to regulate the slaughter methods, because there are humane ways to do it, such as lowering the temperature until they go into hibernation and then eventually die (24hrs to be safe), and inhumane, like boiling, frying, steaming, roasting, etc. There are some that are served and eaten still alive, which ranks pretty low on my humane scale.

Entomo says they treat the crickets ethically. They live at least 80% of their natural life cycle in large open rooms instead of crates. They roam freely and have constant access to food and water. I guess that’s better?

For farms that do use crates, they’re reasoning is that crates can be stacked to use space more efficiently and they’re usually given nooks and crannies and objects to climb on and hide in, for they’re comfort.

Brian Tomasik, who writes about reducing animal suffering, argues that eating insects isn’t ethical, and one of his best points was: is it ethical to bring more insects into existence in farming operations, if their lives are worse off than in their natural habitat? Even if large farms do a good job, amateur farms are likely to cause harm by neglect or making mistakes, like forgetting to feed and water them.

What do you think?

Downsides of Eating Insects

We have to be careful of over-doing it. Most insects are still harvested from the wild rather than farmed, so it’s possible to accidentally destroy the local insect population. From what I could find this is pretty rare, but still something to consider.

Wild caught insects are also more likely to have pesticides if they’ve been hanging around crops, which is a bad thing for us to be eating.

Because production isn’t mainstream, there needs to be more studies done on concentrations of heavy metals, pesticides, and allergens. Also, infrastructure and machinery for mainstream harvesting is still new and it’s loosely regulated or not regulated at all in most countries. It’s hard to know how safe the production process is for turning out food. If insects are being raised on farms with poor quality or straight up rotten feed, then humans are getting that nasty bacteria.

We have to be careful about introducing insects into environments where they might cause harm. It’s difficult to bring live insects into Australia, for example, and I don’t think that’s a bad thing. While farms might remain mostly closed, it’s gotta be pretty hard to contain them fully.

Because farming insects is not a well understood industry, scaling it up to meet the demands of a population pushing 8 billion people will probably bring surprise issues that are difficult to see now but obvious in hindsight.

They look nasty as fuck. I read an article by Angela Skujins who tried to eat insects in every meal for a week, and it was a huge failure, she lost 4 pounds and thought she’d die of starvation.

Crickets still need to eat food. So they’ll still require crops and energy from heating their facilities (although because they like darkness, a bit of energy is saved by keeping the lights out).

Overall, if you’re looking for the most ethical diet, it’s still vegan.

So Are We All Going To Be Eating Insects?

The industry is slowly growing. In 2018 Sainsbury’s in the UK started carrying Crunchy Roasted Crickets. Whole Foods and Loblaw here in Canada also apparently stock it, although I’ve never noticed and I’ll have to watch out for it now. More than 100 companies currently exist that produce their own branded foods made from insects.

The industry was worth less than a billion dollars in 2019, but is projected to be worth as much as 8 billion dollars by 2030.

Aspire Food Group, a farm in Texas, is ramping up the size of it’s operation because demand for cricket powder is so high.

So will people eat bugs? Yeah probably someday. Sushi was very stigmatized when it was first introduced in the west but grew popular because restaurants put it on their menus and patrons trusted the chefs to present something edible. We might just be one popular restaurant chain and an influencer munching on a cricket burger away from cricket chips in every cupboard.

Further Info

Fun Fact of the episode: when crickets are ready to mate, they make their chirping noise. If a whole bunch of them are ready to go at once, it gets hella loud in the big farms and farmers have to wear headphones.

Here is a great short video on eating insects!

And another!

And a podcast episode from Wall Street Journal’s Future of Everything

Episode 24 - Wine

The wine market isn’t as concentrated as the beer market. The largest wine producer in the world, E&J Gallo, only has 2.7% of global production. Wine is made in at least fifty countries worldwide. The top five wine exporting countries are France (30% of wine exports), Italy (20%), Spain (9%), Australia (6%), and Chile (5%). All Canadian wine is produced by “small wineries” (wineries that sold less than 200,000 litres of wine)

Human Rights and the Wine Industry

South African Wine and Apartheid

A 2011 Human Rights Watch (HRW) Report, “Ripe with Abuse”, drew attention to human rights condition at South African wineries. A documentary called Bitter Grapes also examined this issue. South Africa’s legacy of apartheid has “continued to haunt the wine sector”.

Farm workers often live in substandard on-farm housing. In one case documented by HRW, a family was living in a converted pig stall with no electricity and water. The structure didn’t even provide shelter from weather. They had been living there for ten years. On-farm housing puts workers in really precarious positions, because when they are fired they lose not only their income but also their home. An estimated 930,000 workers were evicted from housing South African farms between 1994 and 2004. Although there are legal requirements around evicting farm workers, land owners frequently break those rules.

The work is usually seasonal and the pay is very low, especially for female farmworkers. At its extreme, some vineyards in South Africa were paying workers in alcohol rather than wages. Vineyard owners have been documented paying under South Africa’s minimum wages.

Working conditions are generally poor on these farms. Workers often don’t receive contracts or copies of their contracts. Part of the problem is the lack of labour inspectors: there are just over 100 labour inspectors for 6,000 farms and workplaces in the Western Cape. And labour inspectors give farms prior notice when they do inspect.

Farm workers face obstacles in unionizing, especially the fear of discrimination or being fired. For that reason, union density in the Western Cape agricultural sector is 3%, compared with 30% in South Africa’s formal sector as a whole. 2012 South Africa’s Wine Industry Ethical Trade Association launched an ethical seal for unfair labour practices.

Human Rights and Wine Elsewhere 

Although South Africa is most famous for human rights abuses on vineyards, it would be a mistake to assume that it is the only place where these problems persist. Agricultural work is among the most exploited industries.

Fairtrade Wine

One option if workers’ rights are a concern for you is to go for Fairtrade wine, if you’re buying from somewhere like South Africa, where labour protections might not be very strong. If you are looking for wine from South Africa, Argentina, Chile, or Lebanon, there are Fairtrade options available. In Canada, there are at least four wine brands that you can get with the Fairtrade seal. The United Kingdom appears to have a wider range of Fairtrade wine available.

Migrant Labour and Wineries

Canadian wineries rely on migrant labour (seasonal agricultural workers) to do a lot of the work on grape farms. That is common for wine produced in other wealthy countries.

So, the story of labour on Canadian wineries is in a very real sense the story of how we treat seasonal agricultural workers. On that metric, you might want to check out wine from Saskatchewan: it is the province that has done the best job of protecting the human rights of temporary foreign workers, according to a 2018 report by the Canadian Council for Refugees. TFWs there have access to healthcare with no waiting period – which isn’t the case for many provinces – and does a good job of legislating and enforcing worker protections. The federal government and the province of Newfoundland and Labrador fared the worst on this scorecard, with a C or D rating in every category except one (access to permanent residence was a B for Newfoundland, while enforcement of rules and regulations was a B for the federal government). Of the four major wine-producing provinces – Ontario, British Columbia, Quebec, and Nova Scotia – British Columbia has the best protections according to the report (although it wasn’t great either, and there are barriers to accessing healthcare for seasonal agricultural workers). 

COVID-19 and Grape Farms

Farm owners are receiving $1,500 per worker to cover the costs of the required two-week quarantine. In BC, fruit farms rely heavily on backpackers to work during the harvest. They aren’t part of the temporary workers’ program, and it’s expected that this labour source won’t be available. The hope is to train a domestic workforce for the June harvest.

Environment and Wine

Pesticide Use on Vineyards

Grapes are disease- and pest-prone crops, so conventional grape farming uses large quantities of pesticides. Vineyards represent 3% of agricultural land in France, but 20% of phytosanitary volumes and 80% of fungicide use.

Some of those pesticides, including glyphosphate, have been identified as toxic or otherwise linked to adverse health consequences. In France, Valérie Murat launched a lawsuit in 2015 on behalf of her father, James-Bernard Murat, a vine grower who died from cancer. His death was officially recognized as being linked to his profession by the agricultural mutual society (MSA, la Mutuelle sociale agricole). Murat had sprayed three different pesticides containing the chemical sodium ar nite, which is now banned as a cancer-causing poison. Valérie wants his death recognized as manslaughter.

23 schoolchildren were hospitalized in Bordeaux in 2014 after a nearby vineyard sprayed a fungicide.Public attention to the issue of pesticide use in France has prompted some government actions. Glyphosphate is set to be banned by 2021. And the government is set to create no-spray zones to separate sprayed crops from people living and working nearby. One problem is that some winegrowers compensate for pesticide use with mechanization, which increases the carbon footprint of the operation.

Organic Wine

One option is to buy organic-certified wine. Organic agriculture doesn’t use pesticides, herbicides, and fungicides. Organic production doesn’t guarantee that an operation is environmentally-friendly on all metrics. For instance, organics rules may not govern water management. And it doesn’t take into account carbon footprints.

The LCBO is actually featuring organic wines right now.

Biodynamic Certification

Vineyards can also be certified as biodynamic farms. Biodynamic farming uses organic methods, but the standards are stricter and have things like biodiversity requirements. Biodynamic agriculture is similar to organic farming, but it also emphasizes some spiritual and mystical elements. It was created in the 1920s by Rudolf Steiner, an Austrian “philosopher, social reformer, architect, esotericist, and claimed clairvoyant.” The oldest biodynamic accreditation is the Demeter label. Kristen’s personal view: a little kooky, but mostly harmless.

Salmon-Safe Vineyard Certification

If you are buying wine from Oregon, Washington, or British Columbia, you can buy wine that is certified as Salmon-Safe. Basically, it means that the grapes were farmed according to standards that reduce vineyard run-off, protect water quality, and enhance biodiversity. As far as I could tell, it’s basically an add-on to organic or biodynamic certification

Climate Change

It has become an increasing point of discussion that organic =/= low-carbon. Some wineries are making commitments to reduce their carbon footprints. If climate change is the most important metric for you, you can look for wine with the Carbonzero certification.

Carbonzero is a carbon neutrality standard that requires emissions measurements and offsets (although carbon offsets are imperfect).

You can also get wine that is LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certified. LEED is a certification operated by the Canada Green Building Council. It looks at things like water usage, energy efficiency, and sustainable site development. Stratus Vineyards was the first Canadian winery to obtain this standard, which it did in 2005.

Boxed versus Bottled

The most environmentally-friendly way to consume wine is to have it filled somewhere (en vrac method), but that option isn’t available most places – especially right now.

Bag-in-box wine is lighter than glass, so on carbon footprint you might be better off, especially if the wine has to travel a long way. Both glass and cardboard are recyclable, but the plastic bag and spout probably aren’t.

Tetra-paks have the carbon savings advantage of bag-in-box wine, but the drawback is that it’s made of a fusion of polyethylene, paper and aluminum. So you need special equipment to recycle them. As a result, the global recycling rate of Tetra Paks is 26%. And the recycling is actually downcycling, as compared with glass – where you pretty much get the same output from recycling.

Animal Welfare

We covered this in the vegetarianism episode, but you can go to Barnivore to find vegan alcohol options, including wine. Again, many wines aren’t vegan because they are clarified using fining agents that are made of casein (milk protein), albumin (egg whites), gelatine (animal protein), or isinglass (fish bladder protein). Fining agents can be vegan though, for instance activated charcoal and bentonite (clay). Many organic wines aren’t vegan, but some are.

Major Brands and Ethical Consumer’s Wine Guide

Barefoot Wines, the biggest selling wine in the world, is made by E&J Gallo Winery, scored relatively well on Ethical Consumer’s company rating. They scored an 11.5 out of 20, which is the top of the “amber” category (out of green, amber, and red).

E&J Gallo doesn’t report on environmental performance, doesn’t independently verify, and doesn’t have targets for improvement. So Ethical Consumer gave it their worst rating for environmental reporting. E&J Gallo also got a worst rating for supply chain management. This is because “It was considered to have a reasonable approach to discrimination, and forced and child labour, but did not mention freedom of association, living wages, or working hours. The company was considered to have a poor supply chain policy.”

On the other hand, Ethical Consumer recommends avoiding Constellation Brands products.

Episodes 22 and 23 - Seafood

The seafood industry is large, and growing, as humans are eating more fish each year. You might be surprised to learn that, per capita, annual fish consumption has increased from 9.9kg in the 1960s to 19.2kg in 2012. And the average Canadian eats slightly more than this, at 23.1kg. Americans eat an estimated 17 billion marine creatures annually.[1] 

Fishing is a Global Industry

In addition to capturing spectacular worldwide demand, fish is a global industry because it is a highly traded commodity: approximately 200 countries export fish and fishery products. Canadian fish and seafood imports generally match the global trend. The top five countries of origin for our fish and seafood imports are: the U.S. (36.7%), Thailand (14.9%), China (14.6%), Chile (5.1%) and Vietnam (4.6%).

The Fishing Supply Chain

1. Fish and shellfish (A) living in open waters or (B) raised via aquaculture in ponds, tanks or bounded coastal waters are harvested.  

2. They are packed and transported to processing facilities.

3. Processors convert the fish to consumer products (i.e. canned, frozen, filets, smoked). In some cases, processing takes multiple steps while in others fish are transported live.

4. Wholesalers receive the processed or unprocessed fish and distribute the product to retailers and restaurants.

5. You buy/eat it.

This episode focuses on just step one of the fish supply chain. Maybe we’ll cover the others in future episodes.

Overfishing

The State of Overfishing

85% of global fish stocks overfished. “Overfishing” refers to a situation when more fish are caught than can be replaced through natural reproduction. It has several causes, including rising demand, new technology, and governance gaps.

A study of catch data published in the journal Science in 2006 predicted that if fishing rates continue at the same rate, all the world's fisheries will have collapsed by 2048. The problem of overfishing is so bad that some have argued for giving the oceans their own seat at the United Nations.  The global ocean plays a central role in supporting life on Earth. Oceans cover 3/4 of the planet and contain 80% of all life.

Overfishing affects the entire ocean ecosystem. But especially the top of the food chain: the population of large predatory fish has dropped by an estimated 90% since the industrialization of fisheries in the 1950s.

Overfishing is bad for workers as well as the environment: because fish stocks have been declining, vessels must take longer and longer voyages to find fish, meaning that workers are stuck aboard for long periods of time; declining stocks also make fish processing an increasingly precarious job.

You might recall the collapse of the Newfoundland Grand Banks cod fishery in the 1990s: this put between 50 000 and 40 000 people out of work. Fishing is central to the livelihood and food security of an estimated 200 million people. Sustainable fishing matters for the environment, for animals, and for people.

Illegal, Unregulated, and Unreported Fishing

The problem of forced labour on fishing vessels is extremely difficult to tackle, as it is linked to illegal, unregulated, and unreported (IUU) fishing (IUU fishing also goes hand in hand with overfishing).  

Because international waters are a global commons, regulating fishing has proven extremely difficult. For this reason, people often refer to overfishing as a tragedy of the commons (each individual has an incentive to overfish, even if collectively everyone would benefit from responsible stewardship).

IUU fishing is a huge problem: it is estimated that IUU fishing accounts for 30% of all fishing activity worldwide.  Structural loopholes in international maritime law, specifically on the high seas, allow for IUU fishing to proliferate.

Outside of a country’s exclusive economic zone (on the “high seas”, which cover 64% of the surface area of the ocean) ships are governed by the laws of the country in which that vessel is registered (the “flag country”).

Often, fishing vessels are registered in countries with no meaningful link to their operations. IUU fishing occurs in primarily on the high seas and poorly regulated national waters. For example, along the coastline of sub-Saharan Africa forced labour is a problem on European and Asian fishing vessels in poorly regulated waters.

Seafood Fraud

A recent investigation of seafood bought in Montreal found that more than half of samples were mislabelled. 61% were mislabelled in some way, while 34% were an entirely different species than advertised.

Unfortunately, this is not an outlier. It merely highlights the endemic challenge of falsely and mislabeled seafood. Between 25 and 70 percent of seafood products in Canada are “mislabeled due to counterfeiting somewhere along the supply chain”. Globally, on average 30 percent of seafood products are mislabeled.

Why so high? As fish markets have globalized so too have the supply chains for fish products, resulting in a “notoriously opaque” system in which weak governance provides a hospitable environment for seafood fraud. Also, consumers don’t really know much about seafood – which is a very wide category. Approximately 350 species of seafood can be found in American markets.[2] So, seafood fraud is very easy.

Common frauds:

·      In Canada, cod is often actually haddock[3]

·      One investigation found that three quarters of red snapper was actually another species – most commonly red sea bream or tilapia.[4]

·      Grouper is another seafood that will be mislabelled. It’s often actually catfish[5]

·      And fish labelled as wild caught is often actually farmed[6]

Beyond being a consumer rights issue – if you buy salmon you probably want to know that you are receiving salmon – seafood mislabeling poses challenges for sustainability.

Eco-labels with traceability standards offer a partial solution to this problem, although seafood mislabeling still happens under such schemes (but it happens a lot less). Of course, private regulation has its limits – accordingly, government-mandated traceability requirements will play an important role as well. (For a good summary of traceability standards in the seafood industry, see this report.)

Finally, better tools are needed. DNA testing has generated research attention since it poses a potential solution to the deficiencies of current traceability best practices. For instance, the MSC published a report on the subject in March. 

The Ecological Effects of Fishing

In addition to overfishing, sustainability also concerns the broader environmental impact of fishing processes. For example, if gear is lost during the fishing process or if fishing entails destructive processes, such as the use of dynamite and poisons, this can cause more widespread ecosystem damage.

Commercial fishing gear is becoming more efficient and less efficient, depending on how you look at it. Modern fishing devices are great at finding and catching fish. But they damage the seabed and catch a lot of unwanted species in the process. “Bycatch” refers to marine species captured in a fishing operation that aren’t the target species. Bycatch is usually thrown overboard, dead or dying.

The bycatch ratio varies dramatically from method to method, but in general about a quarter of all fish taken worldwide is bycatch.[7] Sometimes, as is the case for shrimp trawling, there is much more bycatch collected than the actual intended catch.[8] In Thailand’s shrimp industry, the bycatch ratio is 14:1.[9] Dredges, bottom trawls, and drift nets are the worst for bycatch and habitat destruction – well, also dynamite.

Bottom Trawling

Bottom trawling basically turns the bottom of the sea into something resembling a paved surface or plowed field.[10] This causes extensive and irreparable damage to coral reefs and seabed ecosystems.[11] It also stirs up sediment that makes the area unlivable for some species.[12] Bottom trawling is the “marine equivalent of clear-cutting a rain forest.”[13] The average trawling operation throws 80-90 percent of the sea animals that it captures as bycatch overboard.[14] “Imagine using a bulldozer to catch songbirds for food – that’s what it’s like.” (biologist Sylvia Earle)[15]

Dolphin-Safe

Dolphin safe: in 1987 a biologist filmed dolphins being drowned in purse seine nets for tuna fishing. The footage of dolphins shrieking as the nylon nets tore away their fins really affected people, and tuna consumption dropped almost overnight. “Dolphin-safe” tuna was maybe the first ethical seafood consumer movement

Aquaculture

As overfishing impacts more and more species, fish farming is on the rise. For instance, if you are eating Atlantic salmon it is almost certainly from a fish farm: 300 farmed salmon are sold for every wild caught salmon.[16] Fish farming is the fastest growing form of food production in the world. In 1970 it contributed 3% of the world’s seafood, compared to more than 50% today.[17] And the weight of farmed fish exceeds the weight of beef produced globally.[18]

Here’s a description of aquaculture that I found helpful: “In the fjords and coastal inlets along the coast of Norway, Britain, Iceland, Chile, China, Japan, Canada, the United States, and many other countries, cages or nets that may be more than 200 feet long and 40 feet deep have been lowered into the sea and secured to platforms from which workers feed the fish. With salmon, 50,000 fish may be confined to each sea cage, at a stocking density that is equivalent to putting each 30-inch salmon in a bathtub of water.”[19]

 Fish farming is problematic for a bunch of reasons. First, because of the intensity of farming it is not great from an animal welfare perspective. More on this in a bit.

The second problem with farmed fish is that fish farms require lots of fish feed: “Fish farming sounds like a good way of meeting the growing demand for seafood while taking pressure off wild fisheries. But that can be like thinking that if we ate more beef, we wouldn’t need to grow so much corn.”[20] What often happens is that carnivorous fish are farmed and fed high volumes of fish meal. So, in essence, these operations actually use up a lot more fish flesh than they produce – and that means putting more pressure on wild fish populations.[21] And if you’re thinking, hey, at least fish meal is from relatively abundant fish, remember that this is taking away the food supply from vulnerable apex predator populations.

Fish farming also isn’t very carbon efficient for that reason. Whereas a wild salmon will go and catch its own food, fish farmers need to get fish meal from fossil-fuel powered boats.[22]

Fish farming can also cause harm to the wider environment through the spread of farm waste, chemicals, disease and parasites.  

Basically, high concentrations of fish feces and food waste are discharged, untreated, into the water around sea cages. According to WWF calculations, Scottish salmon farms discharge the same amount of waste as 9 million people (double the human population of Scotland).[23] 

The pollution from fish farming can also affect the people that inhabit coastal areas. For instance, in 1996 activists in India won a class action lawsuit against shrimp farms, on the basis that these farms had cost local communities their livelihoods.[24] In Bangladesh, illegal shrimp farms have displaced thousands of local villagers.[25]

And as with factory farming on land, the intensity of fish feedlots means that fish need to be given antibiotics and pesticides. Those leach into the water and cause environmental problems like ocean dead zones.

Lastly, farmed fish sometimes escape when predators or storms cause holes in the enclosure nets. As many as half a million farmed salmon escape every year, for example.[26] These escapees can infect wild fish with diseases and parasites. For example, young wild salmon now have levels of sea lice infestation 73% times higher than previously.[27]

Some kinds of aquaculture operations are better than others. Oyster and mussel farming seems to be relatively benign.

On the other hand, shrimp farming is a major contributor to the destruction of mangrove forests, in addition to all the regular harms.

Animal Welfare

As was the case for the vegetarianism episode, there are sort of two issues here. The first is whether it is ever okay to eat a living being that feels pain. The second is whether the manner of catching or farming fish is justified on welfare grounds.

Because we’ve covered the first bit before, we’ll skip over it here. Check out part one of vegetarianism for this. I will just quickly say that seafood encapsulates a wide variety of animals, with different capacities and levels of intelligence. Some fish – like octopus – are incredibly intelligent. Most are social creatures that have demonstrated pain responses in scientific studies.

The one exception to this may be bivalves. Bivalves are a class of marine and freshwater molluscs that have laterally compressed bodies enclosed by a shell consisting of two hinged parts. They include species like oysters, clams, mussels, and scallops. The evidence for consciousness in bivalves is “barely stronger than it is for plants, which is to say it is vanishingly slight.”[28]

A Good Death? Not So Much

Wild caught fish is somewhat proximate to hunted meat. The fish live normal lives for their species, so the only question is whether the slaughter is unjustifiably cruel. There is no such thing as humane slaughter for wild-caught fish. Take longline fishing, for example. When fish are hooked, they struggle for hours trying to escape. Then they are either clubbed to death or have their gills cut and bleed to death.

In trawlers, hundreds of different species are crushed together, gashed on corals, bashed on rocks – for hours – and then hauled from the water, causing painful decompression (the decompression sometimes causes the animals’ eyes to pop out or their internal organs to come out their mouths). On longlines, too, the deaths animals face are generally slow. Some are simply held there and die only when removed from the lines. Some die from the injury caused by the hook in their mouths or by trying to get away. Some are unable to escape attack by predators […] no fish gets a good death. Not a single one. You never have to wonder if the fish on your plate had to suffer. It did.[29]

Also, your wild caught fish probably came with bycatch.

Fish Farming

Farmed fish are similar to factory farmed cows, chickens, and pigs. They are in very crowded environments. Farmed fish exhibit stress behaviours just like factory farmed mammals and birds.[30]

Eating Animals identifies six sources of suffering on salmon farms: “(1) water so fouled that it makes it hard to breathe; (2) crowding so intense that animals begin to cannibalize one another; (3) handling so invasive that physiological measures of stress are evident a day later; (4) disturbance by farmworkers and wild animals; (5) nutritional deficiencies that weaken the immune system; and (6) the inability to form a stable social hierarchy, resulting in more cannibalization.”[31]

Also like factory farming on land, farmed fish have a high death rate due to illness, abrasions, and sea lice infestations – which Lex so helpfully told us about in the food episode. A recent study found that salmon bred and raised at fish factory farms are forced to grow at such an accelerated rate that over 50% of them are going deaf. Cool. “Another study by Royal Society Open Science found that a significant proportion of farmed salmon suffer from severe depression. The fish are referred to as ‘drop outs’ because they float lifelessly in the dirty tanks they reside in.” (source: Live Kindly)

Farmed fish are typically starved for 7-10 days before slaughter.[32] Because there generally aren’t rules for the humane slaughter of fish, farmed fish are killed in brutal ways that would be illegal in land operations.[33] Sometimes they are simply allowed to suffocate on land, which can take 15 minutes.[34] They are sometimes bashed in the head with a wooden bat, which sometimes doesn’t kill them – meaning that they can be cut open while fully conscious.[35] Sometimes they have their gills cut and bleed to death.[36]

Bivalve Farming

The one type of fish farming that may be ethically justifiable is the farming of bivalves like mussels and oysters. Because these creatures likely don’t feel pain and aren’t conscious, the same cruelty concerns don’t apply. Also, bivalves feed themselves and actually clean up the water around them – theoretically getting around some of the environmental issues.

Generally speaking, “mom and pop” mussel and oyster farms seem to be fine – good, even – for the environment. However, there are some arguments that mussel and oyster farms at a large scale can have negative environmental effects. So, it’s still unclear whether they’re a good idea at an industrial scale.

Human Rights

Thailand is the third largest exporter of seafood in the world (the country’s seafood industry is worth $7.3 billion USD annually); it is also notorious for crewing fishing boats with slaves trafficked from Burma and Cambodia. A form of bonded labour is typical: in this scenario, trafficked fishermen are sold to fishing boat owners and then must work to pay off a given price (the ka hua). In addition to being enslaved, workers on such ships are exposed to overwork, violence, torture, and even executions at sea.

Each year the U.S. State Department produces its Trafficking in Persons (TIP) report. In 2014, that report downgraded Thailand to a Tier 3 ranking due to a lack of improvements. The report revealed that the Thai government ignored instances of human trafficking and even sought to punish those attempting to bring these abuses to light.

Thailand is often used as an example of human trafficking in the fishing industry because of the size of its fishing industry and inaction on the part of its government (regulation of the Thai fishing industry is woefully inadequate). Nonetheless, this is a problem that exists worldwide. While Southeast Asia is the biggest problem region for slavery on fishing vessels, this is a global phenomenon. Human trafficking is endemic in the fishing industry. Some fishing operations in at least 51 countries crew their ships with slave labour. 

Sustainability Labels

Marine Stewardship Council

When purchasing sustainable seafood there may be several different eco-labels available to you, but the one that is largest and most well-known is the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC). MSC was founded in 1996 by WWF and Unilever.

The MSC’s standards are based on three principles:

1. The condition of the fish populations: are there enough fish to ensure that the fishery is sustainable?

2. The impact of the fishery on the marine environment: what effect is the fishery having on the immediate marine environment, including non-target fish, marine mammals, and seabirds?

3. The fishery management systems: the rules and procedures that are necessary to meet principles one and two.[37]

The MSC now accounts for about 10% of global wild caught seafood (as compared to aquaculture/farmed fish) but this proportion is often much higher in developed countries, where the demand for certified fish is higher. In Canada, for example, 67% of domestic wild catch seafood is MSC certified.

In addition to being the most widely used eco-label, MSC is also well-known for its rigorous standards. However, it has been criticized for focusing too narrowly on the sustainability of fish stocks instead of the overall environmental impact of fisheries and the fish supply chain, as well as for having a process that is too burdensome for small fisheries and fisheries in developing countries.

If you are looking for sustainably caught seafood, the MSC is probably your best bet: it is the most likely to actually be available in stores near you and has standards that are reasonably stringent and evaluated impartially, based on evidence.

Aquaculture Stewardship Council

The Aquaculture Stewardship Council (ASC) was founded in 2010, also with the involvement of WWF. ASC standards focus primarily on environmental issues, like pollution reduction and protections for biodiversity. There are also a few social standards – no child or forced labour, safe working environments, consulting Indigenous communities, and regulated working hours – in ASC. There are no animal welfare standards as far as I was able to tell.

SeaChoice reviewed ASC and MSC certifications in Canada. They found some weaknesses with MSC, but bigger ones with ASC – lots of evidence of non-compliance with the standards.

What to Think About When Choosing Ethical Seafood

For my own part, I believe that seafood is largely not an ethically justified dietary choice. I would only consider eating bivalves, and in that case only if the method of farming/fishing is sustainable and environmentally responsible.

However, for those that want to cast a wider ethical net, here is what you should think about:

Species

Is it overfished or not? There’s a fairly long list of seafood species you should never eat because they are overfished. But some of the more well-known ones include: bluefin tuna, Atlantic cod, Chilean sea bass, shark, Atlantic halibut, and monkfish.[38]  You can usually feel comfortable that a few seafood species aren’t overfished. Those include: oysters, mussels, sardines, Pacific halibut, herring, jellyfish, mullet, and pickerel.[39]

What is its trophic level? Is it an apex predator? Bottomfeeder recommends eating only bottom-of-the-foodchain species, because the big fish are so overfished.[40]

Does it feel pain/how intelligent is it?

Fishing or farming method

Things you might want to ask yourself about the fishing or farming method include:

• How much bycatch is produced?

• Does it kill coral or otherwise destroy ecosystems? How polluting is it?

• How cruel is this method?

The best catch methods from a sustainability perspective are hook and line fishing, harpoons and scuba, pots and traps, and purse seines.[41] Always avoid seafood caught with drift nets (“walls of death”), dynamite and cyanide, and bottom trawls.[42]

Location

Location matters too. Try asking:

• How far does the seafood have to travel to get to me?

• How did it travel? (e.g. really pricey fish by air freight have a large carbon footprint)

Brands/Certifications

To try to push the market you can ask: is the company that sold it a seafood leader or laggard? You can also look for seafood with MSC or ASC certification. And if there isn’t a certification, ask yourself: do you really know anything about where the seafood came from?

How to Choose Ethical Seafood

If you are going to be a selective omnivore, Taras Grescoe’s Bottomfeeder offers a generally good rule of thumb for seafood: eat as close to the bottom of the food chain as possible.[43]

Bottomfeeder also recommends:[44]

• Avoiding cheap seafood, since it was probably farmed

• Avoiding fish that has travelled far

• Avoiding long-lived predator fish (e.g. Chilean sea bass, sharks, tuna, swordfish)

• Avoiding farmed shrimp, tuna, salmon, and any other carnivorous fish

• If buying farmed salmon, cod, or trout, opt for organically farmed ones (the book was written before ASC was created)

• Opt for seafood at the lower end of the food chain as much as possible

In addition, there are a few useful tools that can help you pick ethical seafood:

• SeaChoice is a good place to go to get informed about sustainable seafood.

• Oceanwise classified seafood as recommended or not recommended. The full list is a bit overwhelming, but you can also search the website pretty easily. SeaChoice ranked this as the best resource for choosing ethical seafood.

• Seafood Watch has a useful website that you can use to search species that are “best choice”, “good alternatives”, or “avoid”.

Endnotes

[1] Singer, Peter and Mason, Jim. (2006). The Ethics of What We Eat. Rodale Publishers.

[2] Grescoe, Taras. (2008). Bottomfeeder: How to Eat Ethically in a World of Vanishing Seafood. Toronto, ON: HarperCollins.

[3] Grescoe, Bottomfeeder.

[4] Grescoe, Bottomfeeder.

[5] Grescoe, Bottomfeeder.

[6] Grescoe, Bottomfeeder.

[7] Singer and Mason, The Ethics of What We Eat.

[8] Singer and Mason, The Ethics of What We Eat.

[9] Singer and Mason, The Ethics of What We Eat.

[10] Singer and Mason, The Ethics of What We Eat.

[11] Singer and Mason, The Ethics of What We Eat.

[12] Singer and Mason, The Ethics of What We Eat.

[13] Safran Foer, Jonathan. (2009). Eating Animals. New York: Back Bay Books at p.191.

[14] Safran Foer, Eating Animals.

[15] Grescoe, Bottomfeeder at p.27.

[16] Singer and Mason, The Ethics of What We Eat.

[17] Singer and Mason, The Ethics of What We Eat.

[18] Singer and Mason, The Ethics of What We Eat.

[19] Singer and Mason, The Ethics of What We Eat page 122.

[20] Singer and Mason, The Ethics of What We Eat page 123.

[21] Singer and Mason, The Ethics of What We Eat.

[22] Singer and Mason, The Ethics of What We Eat.

[23] Singer and Mason, The Ethics of What We Eat.

[24] Singer and Mason, The Ethics of What We Eat.

[25] Singer and Mason, The Ethics of What We Eat.

[26] Singer and Mason, The Ethics of What We Eat page 122.

[27] Singer and Mason, The Ethics of What We Eat.

[28] Singer and Mason, The Ethics of What We Eat at page 133.

[29] Safran Foer, Eating Animals at p. 192-3.

[30] Singer and Mason, The Ethics of What We Eat.

[31] Safran Foer, Eating Animals at p.190

[32] Singer and Mason, The Ethics of What We Eat.

[33] Singer and Mason, The Ethics of What We Eat.

[34] Singer and Mason, The Ethics of What We Eat.

[35] Singer and Mason, The Ethics of What We Eat.

[36] Singer and Mason, The Ethics of What We Eat.

[37] Singer and Mason, The Ethics of What We Eat.

[38] Grescoe, Bottomfeeder.

[39] Grescoe, Bottomfeeder.

[40] Grescoe, Bottomfeeder.

[41] Grescoe, Bottomfeeder.

[42] Grescoe, Bottomfeeder.

[43] Grescoe, Bottomfeeder.

[44] Grescoe, Bottomfeeder.

Episode 10 - Sugar

This episode featured the inimitable Alexandra Sundarsingh, a PhD student in the History Department at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Lex is an historian of food, migration, and labour. She is also part of the Canadian debate illuminati, which is how she and Kristen became friends. Lex highly recommends that you check out the book Sweetness and Power by Sidney W. Mintz – which Lex drew on for some of the information in this episode. (Actually, Lex wants you to gift this book to pretty much everyone you know; we’d endorse that).

We were really excited to link Lex’s expertise on the history of sugar to some of the present-day practices of the sugar industry. So, the research note below focuses primarily on modern human rights abuses in the sugar industry. There is also some information about sugar and the environment, which Kristen collected but did not discuss – like, y’all, we had been recording for two hours and we thought, ‘Let’s maybe save this for a future episode.’ But we’ve put the notes here just in case you want to know what we found.

Background

What is sugar?

Sugar (sucrose) is produced from two major sources: sugarcane and sugar beets. We did not talk about corn syrup (fructose) in this episode, but it could have (probably will have) an entire episode to itself. We also didn’t talk about maple syrup.

Sugarcane is a grass that reaches 10-20 feet. It grows in warm, humid conditions, typically near the equator. It is a perennial. Sugar beet is a 3-5 pound off-white root crop. It can grow in temperate climates with warm days and cool nights. More than 145 million tonnes of sugar is produced annually in 120 countries.

Here are some different kinds of sugar:

·      Granulated sugar: pure sucrose, the most common form of sugar;

·      Icing sugar: powdered granulated sugar with cornstarch to prevent caking;

·      Brown sugar: produced by crystallizing the golden coloured syrup (before purification?) or mixing molasses syrups with white sugar

·      Liquid sugar

·      Other specialty sugars (e.g. plantation raw, organic)

How is sugar made?

Sugar-making is a multifaceted process. Briefly, here are the steps of the process:

·      Sugar plants are cultivated and harvested;

·      Then they are washed and sent to sugar refineries for processing;

·      Processing sugar starts by slicing sugar beets or crushing sugar cane;

·      Then the sugar is extracted by essentially stewing the sugar in hot water to make a juice;

·      Next, the pulp is removed;

·      Then the sugar is purified using a lime solution and concentrated by boiling it at a low temperature;

·      After a thick juice is produced, it is crystallized, spun in a centrifuge, and dried/cooled;

·      Finally, the sugar is packaged and distributed.

There’s a really good video on sugar beet production from How It’s Made. If you are interested in making your own, here is a link to a DIY process. To be honest, though, it seems a lot less efficient than the manufacturing process. But hey, if you’ve got sugar beets on-hand, you do you. The fibre that remains as a by-product of the sugar refining process is used to generate electricity, or it can be manufactured into paper goods or pelletized for animal feed.

Where does our sugar come from?

Most of the sugar that we consume (60-70%) worldwide comes from cane sugar, while the remainder is from sugar beet. Depending on where you live, that proportion can be very different. Fun fact: sugar beet rose in popularity as a result of a blockade of French trade lines during the Napoleonic wars.

The top five global sugar cane producers are Brazil, India, China, Thailand, and Pakistan. If we’re talking about both kinds of sugar, the only major change is that the EU takes third place. Brazil alone accounts for more than half (52%) of the world’s sugar market. 

Almost all Canadian sugar (90%) is from imported raw cane sugar. The remaining 10% is beet sugar, mostly from Alberta. When we import the raw cane sugar, it is processed by Canadian refineries in Montreal, Toronto, and Vancouver.

Albertan sugar beets are processed by a Canadian company called Rogers Lantic – the product of a recent merger of an east coast sugar company (Lantic) and a western Canadian company (Rogers). All Canadian sugar beets are processed by a refinery in Taber, Alberta. If you’re buying Rogers sugar with a black stamp on the bag that starts with the number 22, you’re buying Albertan beet sugar. There is also some sugar beet production in Ontario near a processing plant in Michigan.

Canada’s sugar industry is essentially dominated by Rogers-Lantic and Redpath Sugar. There are Canadian sugar refineries in Quebec, Ontario, Alberta, and BC. Aside from the Taber facility in Alberta, Canadian sugar refineries all process cane sugar.

Labour Abuses and the Sugar Industry

Human rights and cane sugar farming

Historically, sugar cane has well-documented links to slavery. But what are the practices today? Well, in short: it’s not great. Child labour, forced labour, and bonded labour are still prominent facets of sugarcane cultivation today.

Children between the ages of five and fifteen are engaged in child labour on sugar plantations. They may work as unpaid family helpers or migrate with their parents to find work on commercial plantations during harvest season. In El Salvador, for example, Human Rights Watch found that nearly all of the boys aged fourteen and older harvested sugarcane. And it’s important to remember that this is dangerous work.

Sugarcane may be produced using forced labour in Bolivia, Brazil, the Dominican Republic, Myanmar, Pakistan, India, and Guatemala, according to Know the Chain. In Brazil, there are approximately 25,000 – 100,000 people in slavery, virtually all of whom are involved in agricultural work. Sugarcane production is one of the major sources of Brazilian slave labour. Most slaves work on estates in the extremely remove eastern Amazon region, occurring out of view of the population. As researcher Justin Campbell describes:

“Enslavement typically begins with a hired contractor, known as a gato, who recruits impoverished men from the slums of large cities or poor, rural villages. By offering cash up front and the promise of decent wages, he is able to entice these men to leave their homes for work on a distant estate. The men are then driven hundreds or thousands of miles to a remote ranch or plantation, where they are informed that they are in debt for the costs of transportation, food provided on the trip, and even tools. The debts are never erased; the illiterate workers have little recourse and are thus enslaved.”[1]

Research by the Conversation found that even among Bonsucro-certified sugar mills in Brazil (where workers are required to provide at least the legal minimum wage) workers’ earnings fall short of what is needed for a decent standard of living. Sugarcane is sometimes called the “hunger crop” for the poverty experienced by plantation workers.

And more generally, sugarcane workers experience negative health impacts. There was recently an epidemic of kidney disease across Central America, with rates rising by as much as 41% in some places (Nicaragua; 27% in Guatemala; 26% in El Salvador; 16% in Costa Rica). The suspected cause was heat stress from working in unsafe conditions on sugarcane plantations.

Canadian sugar beets and Japanese-Canadian internment

Canadian history: so fun! So many human rights abuses! Did you know that some of the Japanese-Canadians that were interned during WWII were forced to work on beet sugar farms? Well, they were. About 4,000 Japanese-Canadians were sent to work on sugar beet farms in Alberta and Manitoba to fill labour shortages (of about 12,000 total interned). Fuck you, William Lyon Mackenzie King.

Canadian sugar beets and the exploitation of Indigenous people

From the 1940s to the 1980s, thousands of Indigenous families were recruited to work on sugar beet farms across the prairies. Essentially, farmers would go into northern Métis reserved to offer families work harvesting sugar beets. Labour conditions were horrendous – 12-14 hour shifts with no food or water and very low pay. Living conditions were just as bad. In some cases, families received no accommodations and slept in their trucks. In other cases, they slept in tents. Indigenous workers were also subject to racism. Families continued to return because they had few other alternatives. The Department of Indian Affairs would cut off social assistance and apprehend children if they did not work on the sugar beet farms.

This practice only stopped when journalists with the Winnipeg Tribune exposed the labour conditions in Winnipeg in 1975. After that, Indigenous farm workers organized to demand better conditions. That struggle, in combination with the availability of farm machinery, ended the practice in the mid-1980s. (So yeah white Canadians did effectively nothing)

Labour practices on beet sugar farms today

What about human rights and sugar beets? We were not able to find a lot on this, but sugar beet farming today is mostly mechanized, so the labour practices are likely not so bad. However, this does prompt an ethical question of whether the guise of buying ethical – which if you’re buying beet sugar means buying from the global north – is perpetuating international income divides. That’s a tricky ethical question and at some point in the future we want to give it a full episode, because it’s a theme that we expect will recur.

For now, though, we’ll say this: we don’t think that buying beet sugar (or switching to substitutes like maple syrup) is really the right way to approach the problem. Definitely, switching to stevia is a bad way to go (see below). Instead, we think the best you can do is to: (1) support fair trade sugar and (2) support political change. More on fair trade later.

Labour practices in Canadian sugar refineries

It was tricky to find information about labour practices on sugar refineries. At least some sugar refinery workers are unionized, though. Lantic Roger’s Sugar workers in Taber, Alberta are unionized through UFCW (local 383); Lantic Suger workers in Montreal also unionized; and workers at Redpath sugar refinery in Belleville also unionized through UFCW. So even though labour issues might come up at sugar refineries, when we’re talking about labour abuses in sugar we are usually talking about sugar extraction – and mostly sugarcane extraction.

Environment and Sugar

The environmental impact of cultivating and processing sugar includes: loss of natural habitats; water use; agro-chemical use, discharge, and run-off; and air pollution (according to a study by WWF). Because sugarcane deteriorates as soon as it is harvested, it needs to be quickly transported to a refinery; in contrast, sugar beets can be stored for months.

Land use

We were unfortunately not able to find much on whether sugarcane or sugar beets are relatively more land intensive. Articles seemed to point to the fact that both divert land use. A European sugar lobby (le Comité Européen des Fabricants de Sucre) study found that sugar beets are 50% less land intensive, but this is a pretty biased source (Europeans grow sugar beet).

In 2019, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro lifted a ban on cultivating sugarcane in the Amazon rainforest and other areas of primary forest. This surprised even the sugarcane industry, which views the move as an unnecessary reputational risk. Sugarcane in Brazil is used for biofuel as well as sugar. Bolsonaro’s decision has been uniformly criticized by environmental groups. Sugarcane plantations threaten biodiversity and can cause deforestation.

Water use

Producing a 0.5 litre bottle of pop uses between 170 and 310 litres of water. Less than 1% of this is from the actual water in the final product. Most of the rest (95%) comes from the supply chain. A large portion of this comes from sourcing the sugar.

Sugarcane is a more water-intensive crop than sugar beet:

●      1 kg of sugar from sugarcane = 390 gallons of water

●      1 kg of sugar from sugar beets = 243 gallons of water

Oftentimes, to grow sugar producers will siphon water from local populations in water-stressed regions.

Air pollution

Harvesting process for sugarcane involves torching the fields to strip the crop of leaves. That causes air pollution.

Emissions

There is a lot more variability in how emissions-intensive sugar beets are, compared with sugar cane. At the high end, sugar beets and sugarcane are comparable. At the low end, sugar beets have a smaller carbon footprint. One of the big factors underlying this gap is transportation. Sugar beet is processed directly into white sugar (fewer steps than cane sugar) and generally at nearby factories.

Sustainability Labels for Sugar

Want to buy sustainable sugar? Here is some information about the ecolabels you might see.

Rainforest Alliance certification

Sustainable Agriculture Standard includes rules on biodiversity conservation; improved livelihoods and human wellbeing; natural resource conservation; and effective planning and farm management systems

Bonsucro certification

Bonsucro is a sustainability standard for sugar cultivation and processing. Producers must adhere to seven principles: obey the law; respect human rights and labour standards; manage efficiency to improve sustainability; manage biodiversity and ecosystem; continuously improve; adhere to EU directives; and organization of farmers (smallholder standard only).

Fairtrade

What is fair trade?

Fair trade is a set of movements, campaigns, and initiatives that have emerged in response to the negative effects of globalization, especially the often unjust and inequitable nature of international trade.[2] Fair trade began as a small church and Third World solidarity movement in the early postwar period.[3] Generally speaking, fair trade standards include values like decent and safe work, fair prices for producers, and sustainability

What fair trade labels are out there, and which is best?

There are five recognized fair trade labels: Fair Trade International (certified by FLOCERT); Fair Trade USA (certified by SCS Global Services); Fair for Life (certified by Institute for Marketecology (IMO)); the World Fair Trade Organization (a membership organization that recognizes its members by determining their adherence to 10 principles of fair trade); and the Fair Trade Federation (which is similar to WFTO).

Artificial Sweeteners

There are a bunch of artificial sweeteners out there, and we’ll do an episode on them sometime. But we do want to talk briefly about biopiracy and one artificial sweetener – Stevia – because it came up in the episode.

Stevia – Product of Biopiracy

Stevia is actually a product of biopiracy. Stevia rebaudiana is a plant native to eastern Paraguay and Brazil. Indigenous Guaraní peoples have traditionally used it to sweeten tea and medicine. In the late 1800s, stevia was identified in Western science as a sweetener.

Stevia is commercialized as steviol glycosides, which are ‘high-intensity’ sweeteners. Actually, it is not legal to sell Stevia leaves in EU, US, or Swiss markets. That is essentially because there has been little commercial interest in pursuing an approval process for Stevia leaves. Whereas steviol glycosides have been approved. “In practice this means that the products of large multinational corporations are able to access markets far more easily than products based on the traditional use of whole stevia leaves” (from the Bitter Taste of Stevia). Which is especially fucked because companies will play up the “natural” character of Stevia

The Guaraní have received negligible benefits from the global market for Stevia. This is in violation of their right to benefit from the use of stevia, as established under the Convention on Biological Diversity’s Nagoya Protocol. Today Stevia is grown in many countries outside of Paraguay. China is now the main producer and exporter of Stevia leaves. Stevia is primarily produced by smallholder farmers.

“In Paraguay, the average smallholder producer has only 5-10 ha of arable land available, and cultivates Stevia in crop rotation with other crops such as cotton, cassava, sesame or soy bean. Similarly, in China, Stevia is typically produced by contracted smallholders on plots of […] 667 square metres” (from the Bitter Taste of Stevia).

The largest Stevia (steviol glycosides) producers are the multinational corporations Cargill, Stevia First, and DSM. There is currently an effort to produce steviol glycosides through synthetic biology (SynBio) instead of producing them from leaves. Essentially, that would mean that you wouldn’t need to cultivate stevia farms to produce steviol glycosides. If that happens it could hurt smallholder farmers in Paraguay and elsewhere.

Sugary Drinks

Ethical Consumer recommends reducing packaging and food miles by making your own sugar at home, using Fairtrade and organic ingredients

But SodaStream has some of its own issues. It has been criticized for being complicit in Israeli violations of Palestinian human rights because of its operations in the West Bank. And it was recently bought by Pepsi, which has a number of ethically questionable practices.

Call to Action

Looking for something concrete that you can do? We’ve already recommended a few actions above. As a reminder, you can always seek out more ethical sugar by buying fair trade. It is also important to help keep human rights in the sugar industry on our political radar: tell your friends about what you’ve heard; stay informed; sign petitions and support organizations (like Know the Chain and Human Rights Watch) that work to uncover human rights abuses in sugar and elsewhere. But here’s one action we would recommend taking right now: contact your MP and ask them why Canada hasn’t ratified the Nagoya Protocol.

Endnotes

[1] Campbell, Justin. (2008). A Growing Concern: Modern Slavery and Agricultural Production in Brazil and South Asia. Human Rights and Human Welfare, https://www.du.edu/korbel/hrhw/researchdigest/slavery/agriculture.pdf, p.131-2.

[2] This is from an edited volume: Raynolds, Laura, Murray, Douglas, and Wilkinson, John. (eds.). (2007). Fair Trade: The Challenges of Transforming Globalization. NY: Routledge.

[3] Ibid.

Kyla’s Notes

An interesting and well-sourced article with more on how sugar affects the brain.

An idea of average sugar intake.

More on the Maple Syrup Heist.

More info on residential schools.

Even more info on residential schools, from Secret Life of Canada, a podcast we love.

Episode 09 - Veganuary

Veganism as a Set of Ideas and a Movement

History of veganism

The term veganism was coined in 1944 by a British guy named Donald Watson and a small group of non-dairy vegetarians. When they were creating the word vegan, they also suggested: dairyban, vitan, benevore, neo-vegetarian, sanivores, and beaumangeur.

And that is how the Vegan Society came to be founded. Veganism is, as self-described, “A philosophy and way of living which seeks to exclude—as far as is possible and practicable—all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, animals for food, clothing or any other purpose; and by extension, promotes the development and use of animal-free alternatives for the benefit of humans, animals, and the environment.” Veganism is still a bit more of a fringe lifestyle, which is why it is so much harder – whereas almost every restaurant today will have a vegetarian option that is not always true for vegans.

History of Veganuary

Veganuary is a campaign started by a British charity with the same name that was founded in 2014. In 2019, the nonprofit says that 250,000 people took the pledge to try a vegan diet. Veganuary also draws participation from 500 companies, and it has become a hub for launching plant-based products and menus. Veganuary is also supported by Joaquin Phoenix, who lobbied for the all-vegan menu at this year’s Golden Globes. The campaign also aims to raise awareness and to mobilize people into a mainstream vegan movement.

Why veganism?

Although there is a wide spectrum of vegans that have different justifications for their lifestyle choice, most vegans view animal welfare as one of the main reasons behind their choice. From an animal welfare perspective, vegans argue that vegetarianism just doesn’t cut it: dairy and egg family can be just as bad or worse for animal welfare.

The strongest version of the argument says that we shouldn’t use animals as an end at all – so some vegans view it as wrong to even, say, shear a very happy sheep for wool. But most vegans focus on the very real contemporary horrors of our modern food, clothing, and cosmetics industries. The famous historian Yuval Noah Harari (author of Sapiens and Homo Deus), called animal farming “the worst crime in history”.[1]

And many vegans explicitly take aim at the idea that humane meat is possible. Many of today’s “humane” standards, like cage-free eggs, still leave animals in cruel conditions.  

What about wild game? A lot of vegans have ethical issues with killing animals at all, but many will grant that this is a lesser harm than factory farming. However, from an environmental perspective, vegans will often point out that it would be impossible to feed the planet if everyone was consuming this kind of ‘humane’ meat (at least, in anywhere near the quantities that we do today). So, in some sense buying wild game or humane meat from local organic farms is a kind of modern indulgence for privileged aspects of society.

Veganism and whiteness

But the vegan movement has run into some issues of its own when it comes to race and inclusivity. 

For Indigenous people, hunting is a traditional way of life. Especially given the trauma that has been inflicted upon these populations continually since colonization, the ability to connect to traditions is an important part of cultural healing and resilience. Indigenous peoples will also point out that environmental stewardship and respect for the land and animals is embedded in their cultural traditions. So, from their perspective hunting is a morally justifiable part of their way of life. It’s also a crucial component of food sovereignty for Indigenous communities.

This is where vegan activists have sometimes come into conflict with Indigenous people. From an Indigenous perspective, some vegan activists have a White Animal Savior complex, which is inherently anti-indigenous. For example, in 2017 animal activists targeted a new Indigenous-owned and -operated restaurant in Toronto because it had seal on the menu. This was despite the fact that the restaurant (Kū-Kum Kitchen) made a point of vetting the hunters from whom they sourced their seal meat. For more on this issue, check out the documentary Angry Inuk.

More generally, vegan activism has also been criticized for racism against other communities. In 2003 PETA released an ad that related the poultry industry to the Holocaust. Animal activists have made similar associations between animal farming and slavery. 

We also need to talk about the connection between veganism and white nationalism, because Nazis ruin everything. Evidently, a sizable portion of white nationalists are vegan. This has something to do with the concept of “blood and soil” that is a bedrock of white nationalism. Apparently, Hitler was famously vegetarian, which I just learned. But if you recall the uncomfortable association between early vegetarianism and eugenics, it’s not all that surprising.

Finally, until recently been a lack of BIPOC representation in animal rights organizations. As this is starting to change, animal rights activists are becoming attuned to the need to become more intersectional. That means thinking seriously about oppression and developing strategies that are more inclusive.

If you want to be a woke vegan, Gloria Oladipo offers a few tips in an article she wrote for Afropunk. First, non’t culturally appropriate – vegan versions of cultural dishes should come from members of that culture. Next, support initiatives that make plants more accessible – food deserts are often in racialized communities, and solving that problem should be a first focus. Third, feature more BIPOC vegans. (Actually, polling has found that Black and Latinx Americans are vegetarian in roughly the same proportions as white Americans.[2] BIPOC individuals should be represented and should have leadership roles in the movement). And finally, show up for BIPOC causes – acknowledge that BIPOC go through a lot and be an ally.

A friendlier, more inclusive animal-free movement?

That new inclusivity focus has already benefited the movement immensely by underscoring the need to focus on institutional change, rather than individual lifestyle choices. This is one of the core points that Jacy Reese makes in his book, The End of Animal Farming. So, rather than shaming individuals for eating meat, the animal-free movement is now focusing on shaming factory farms and pushing for institutional change.[3] Reese argues that this is actually more efficient because it helps people to overcome status quo bias and mobilizes a wider base of support.  

This is helpful from a strategic perspective because most people already think factory farming is bad; they just feel overwhelmed by the problem and powerless to change things. 32% of Americans believe “animals deserve the same rights as people to be free from harm and exploitation” and another 62% believe they deserve “some rights”, according to a 2015 Gallup poll.[4] The increase in pro-animal rights attitudes over the 1990s and early 2000s is generally attributed to: urban pet ownership, cosmopolitanism, feminism, and religious trends (secularization and the increasing popularity of pro-vegetarian religions like Buddhism). In California, Proposition 2 (a ballot initiative to ban animal confinement in small spaces) drew the highest positive turnout for a citizen initiative in the state’s history.[5]

Tactics like animal farm investigations have also helped, by exposing the conditions in factory farms. The first modern animal farm investigation was carried out in 1992 on a foie gras farm, exposing force-feeding. In the late 1990s and early 2000s these investigations became increasingly popular. “A 1998 PETA investigation of a pig-breeding farm led to the first felony indictments ever for cruelty to farmed animals”.[6] The Humane Society of the US “released a ground-breaking undercover investigation of a California slaughterhouse” in 2008.[7] As these investigations gained prominence, the meat, dairy, and egg industries started to lobby for “ag-gag” laws to limit the ability of activists to document animal farm operations.[8]

Veganism as a Dietary Choice

Vegans don’t eat animals or animal-derived products. This obviously includes meat, fish, poultry, dairy, and eggs. But one of the most difficult things about going vegan is navigating all of the secret animal products in our food.

Animal-derived ingredients

PETA has a comprehensive list of animal-derived ingredients. Dummies.com also has a list. Theirs doesn’t include everything on the PETA list. But it has an easy-to-use layout.

Some of the most common animal-derived ingredients include:

o   Beeswax and honey;

o   Casein (a milk protein derived from animal’s milk), calcium caseinate, sodium caseinate;

o   Confectioner’s glaze, resinous glaze, shellac, natural glaze, pure food glaze (comes from a hardened resinous material secreted by the lac insect);

o   Gelatin (a gelling agent derived from animal collagen);

o   Isinglass (a clarifying agent used in making wine and brewing beer, derived from fish bladders);

o   L. cysteine (a dough conditioner in some pre-packaged breads and baked goods, often sourced from feathers or human hair);

o   Whey (the liquid that remains once milk has been curdled or churned and strained);

o   Carmine (used as a red dye, this is from ground cochineal scale insects);

o   Lactose, saccharum lactin, d-lactose (I found this in chips a lot; it’s essentially a milk sugar);

o   Vitamin D3 (not all, but most Vitamin D3 is derived from fish oil or the lanolin in sheep’s wool) and omega-3 fatty acids (similarly, mostly derived from fish but vegan alternatives are available); and

o   Additives beginning with E (e.g. E904) are often animal-derived.

Veganism tips and tricks

To find out if packaged food is vegan, first look for vegan labelling (“Suitable for Vegans”, “Certified Vegan”). Then you can look for allergen information (e.g.: “Contains milk, eggs, shellfish”). Allergen information won’t generally tell you about meat-containing ingredients, so you should also read the ingredients list. There are some items that can be vegan but typically won’t be (e.g. bread, candy, chips, and beer/wine).

Fruits and vegetables are weirdly not always vegan. That is because they are often coated with either beeswax or a resin called shellac. These make the fruit look prettier, and also can reduce moisture loss and delay rotting. Synthetic polyethylene wax (a petroleum by-product) and carnauba wax (a palm derivative) are common, though problematic vegan substitutes.

If you are looking for a book with practical advice on how to go vegan, check out How To Live Vegan by a pair Youtubers that call themselves Bosh!

Meat substitutes

The first reference to plant-based food that mimicked animal flesh was about tofu in 965 AD. The Magistrate of Qing Yang (China) “encouraged tofu consumption as a more frugal alternative to animal flesh, referring to it as “mock lamb chops” and “the vice mayor’s mutton.””[9]

The first reference to vegetarian meat in Western civilization wasn’t until 1852, referring to a sausage-like mixture made by squeezing chopped turnips and beets.[10] The first recorded veggie burger was created in 1939,[11] and Tofurky was introduced in 1995.[12]

Beyond Meat and the Impossible Burger are two plant-based burgers that are designed to mimic the culinary characteristics of beef burgers. They were both released around the same time. Impossible Burger released its burger in trendy restaurants, whereas Beyond Meat went straight to households by retailing at Whole Foods.[13] The plant-based food industry is now big enough to have an industry association (the Plant Based Foods Association).[14] Major food corporations are now investing in plant-based start-ups or creating their own plant-based food items: Unilever has released its own eggless mayonnaise;[15] General Mills invested in a nut based cheese and yogurt company called Kite Hill;[16] and Tyson Foods invested in a 5% share in Beyond Meat.[17]

Cultured meat

Cultured meat is also called cell-cultured meat, cell-based meat, in-vitro meat, lab-grown meat, and clean meat.[18] In 1998 NASA-funded engineers successfully grew goldfish meat in vitro, but the first cultured meat that people admit to eating was an art exhibition of cultured frog meat created by Australian artist Oron Catts in 2003.[19] There are now four main cultured meat companies racing to the market: MosaMeat, Memphis Meats, Hampton Creek, and SuperMeat.[20]

Endnotes

[1] Reese, Jacy. (2018). The End of Animal Farming. Boston, MA: Beacon Press Books at p.x.

[2] Reese, The End of Animal Farming.

[3] Reese, The End of Animal Farming.

[4] Reese, The End of Animal Farming at p.4.

[5] Reese, The End of Animal Farming.

[6] Reese, The End of Animal Farming at p.24.

[7] Reese, The End of Animal Farming at p.27.

[8] Reese, The End of Animal Farming.

[9] Reese, The End of Animal Farming at p.46.

[10] Reese, The End of Animal Farming.

[11] Reese, The End of Animal Farming.

[12] Reese, The End of Animal Farming.

[13] Reese, The End of Animal Farming.

[14] Reese, The End of Animal Farming.

[15] Reese, The End of Animal Farming.

[16] Reese, The End of Animal Farming.

[17] Reese, The End of Animal Farming.

[18] Reese, The End of Animal Farming.

[19] Reese, The End of Animal Farming.

[20] Reese, The End of Animal Farming.

Episodes 07 and 08 - Vegetarianism

Types of Vegetarian

 There are a few different variants of vegetarianism. Generally speaking, these variants can be put into three categories: the vegetarian-inclined, vegetarians, and vegans.

 Vegetarian-inclined people can be flexitarian or semi-vegitarian. These are people that sometimes eat meat. Then there are pollotarians, who eat poultry and fowl but not other meats. Pescatarians eat fish, but not other meats.

 There are also some different kinds of vegetarians. First, ovolactarians (lacto-ovo-vegetarians) eat dairy products and eggs. Lactarians (lacto-vegetarians) eat dairy but not eggs. Ovo-vegetarians eat eggs but not dairy.

 Then there are vegans! Vegans do not eat animal products at all. However, a variant of veganism called beeganism describes people who do eat honey, but not other animal products.

 If you are interested in moving toward a plant-based diet for environmental reasons, Food is the Solution is a helpful starter. It has good recipes for people who are new to plant-based eating.

 History of Vegetarianism

 Vegetarianism has a long history.

Proto-vegetarianism

 Humans have been vegetarian since before recorded history. Anthropologists believe that early humans would have eaten a predominantly plant-based diet, out of ease. Ancient Egyptians relied mostly on wheat and barley for their diets. They refrained from eating meat, except during festivals and special occasions, for religious reasons (source).

 Pythagoreans were some of the first self-proclaimed vegetarians. This refers to the followers of Pythagoras, an ancient Greek philosopher. They were vegetarian for religious and ethical reasons. Pythagoras considered it wrong to treat any animal differently than one would treat a human (source), as he believed all living beings had a soul. For many years following, a meatless diet was referred to at the Pythagorean diet .  Following a Pythagorean diet was linked to piety and asceticism, since meat was a symbol of wealth and power.

 During the Renaissance, being a Pythagorean was viewed as heresy. But during that same time, influential figures like Leonardo da Vinci and Montaigne began to speak out against animal cruelty (source). Leonardo da Vinci followed a Pythagorean diet and, apparently, was known to set free any caged birds that he found in the marketplace (source). Moral arguments against meat consumption gained speed after the Renaissance, but was still a fringe movement that faced ridicule from society (source)

 The early vegetarian movement

 The term ‘vegetarian’ was first listed in the OED in 1839 (source). The Vegetarian Society of England, the first vegetarian society, formed in England in 1847 in Ramsgate (source). The American Vegetarian Society formed in NYC in 1850. Notable early vegetarians include: Leo Tolstoy, George Bernard Shaw, Mahatma Gandhi (practice of Ahimsa, non-injury), and Susan B. Anthony. Vegetarianism in the 19th and early 20th century was often associated with temperance and abstinence. There is also an uncomfortable association between some early vegetarians and the eugenics movement (e.g., John Kellogg, inventor of corn flakes, was vegetarian and a huge eugenics promoter).

 Vegetarianism goes mainstream

 Vegetarianism grew in the 1970s after the publication of a bestselling book called Diet for a Small Planet, written by Francis Moore Lappe (1971). The book is on the environmental impact of eating meat. Around the same time, Peter Singer (1975) published Animal Liberation.

 1990s-today

 From the 1990s onward, it has become increasingly popular to eat a plant-based diet. As of 2018, 3 million Canadians identify as vegetarian or vegan (almost 10% of the population). This is according to research done by Sylvain Charlebois at Dalhousie University. About 8% of Americans are vegetarian or vegan, and that figure has been relatively flat since the late 1990s, according to Gallup polling data. Flexitarianism is also gaining in popularity – between 2014 and 2018, sales of meat substitutes doubled in the US (from $702M to $1.44B)

 Animal Welfare

 The animal welfare justification for vegetarianism is rooted in two questions. First, is it wrong to raise/kill animals for human consumption, even if it is done humanely? Second, is it wrong to raise/kill animals for human consumption in the way that we are doing it via industrial agriculture? Vegans would extend that question to ask whether it can ever be right to use animals for our consumption purposes (but we’ll go into that in the upcoming veganism episode).

 Animal Rights versus Suffering

 There is a debate on whether to apply a framework of rights to animal welfare concerns. The animal rights (or non-human person rights) movement argues for applying rights to non-human animals. The argument for animal rights typically relies on taking aim at the difference between animal and humans. Animal rights activists argue that humans and animals are not so different on things like consciousness and having distinct preferences. Others argue that animals don’t have rights on grounds that animals and humans are different.

 The non-human animal rights movement has often focused efforts on ‘higher’ animals like primates. In 2016, an Argentine court ordered that a chimp named Cecilia should be released from a zoo. The argument of animal rights lawyers was essentially that Cecilia’s confinement without companionship had a detrimental impact on her health.

 Peter Singer has famously rejected the use of a rights-based frame to justify vegetarianism. Instead, he uses suffering as the metric. This approach is rooted in utilitarianism. Singer essentially says that speciesism is wrong: that we shouldn’t discriminate on the grounds that a being belongs to a species. So, Singer argues that we should take into account whether we are causing harm to another being irrespective of the species. Taking that frame, Singer argues that the key metric is capacity to feel pain. It’s for this reason that he thinks it’s okay to eat bivalves (oysters, mussels, clams) because they probably don’t feel pain.

 So, even if you don’t think that animal rights, you can think that animals have interests that are violated (e.g., to live in decent conditions, to make free choices, to be free from fear/pain, to live healthy lives, to enjoy the normal social/family/community life of its species).

 Factory Farming

 You know this already: factory farming is a nightmare-scape. Factory farms are operations with more than: 500 beef or dairy cattle; 1,000 hogs; 100,000 egg-laying chickens; or 500,000 broiler chickens (sold annually). In America, the vast majority of meat is factory-farmed: upwards of 95% for most animal protein.

 Animals in factory farms have very little space. Breeding sows kept in ‘gestation crates’ that keep them completely immobilized. Most chickens are kept in ‘battery cages’, which hold 5-10 birds. Each bird may have an amount of floor space equivalent to less than a sheet of letter-sized paper. Stress from overcrowding and boredom causes aggression, which is why most pigs have their tails cut off to prevent tail-biting. For the same reason, chickens, turkeys, and ducks are often de-beaked (and a significant portion die during the ordeal). Cows are dehorned and castrated, usually without pain management.

 The overcrowding also means that animals get sick a lot, which is why factory-farmed meat is so pumped with antibiotics.

 Factory farming prioritizes productivity over the well-being of the animals. Egg-laying chickens are put through something called ‘force molting’ where they are denied food for up to two weeks, in order to shock their bodies into another egg-laying cycle. Calves in feed lots are fattened for slaughter on an unnatural diet in order to reach “market weight” of 1,200 pounds within six months. Once they reach this weight they’re killed.

 There are ways to eat non-factory farmed meat, which maybe we’ll cover in a future episode.

 Environment

 Approximately 70 billion animals are raised annually for human consumption. From an environmental perspective, animal agriculture is less efficient than plant-based agriculture, simply because we also need to feed animals when we raise them.

 Shout out to this cool study by Clark, Springmann, Hill and Tilman 2019 on the multiple health and environmental impacts of foods. They look at five health metrics: mortality, coronary heart disease, colorectal cancer, diabetes, and stroke. Clark et al. compare this against five environmental metrics: acidification potential, eutrophication potential, GHG emissions, land use, and scarcity-weighted water use. The study finds that unprocessed and processed red meat is worse on both; animal products like chicken, fish, and dairy are healthier but bad for the environment; and plant-based foods like nuts, legumes, vegetables, and grains are healthier and better for the environment. There are some really cool charts in this study for the nerds out there, so I would definitely recommend taking a look.

 Land Use

 Animal agriculture uses up a lot of land: approximately 26% of Earth’s ice-free land is used for livestock grazing. And beyond that, 33% of croplands are used for livestock feed production. So, the land footprint of animal agriculture is huge. 

 We have talked about land use on the podcast before. Essentially, you want land use to be as efficient as possible because we have a finite amount of space. The more space we put toward animal agriculture, the less we have available for carbon sinks like forests and wetlands. Climate Nexus estimates that replacing beef with plants in your diet reduces the land footprint of that food by 90%. This report has cool maps on land use change in the American heartland.

 Greenhouse Gas Emissions

 Animal agriculture is a major contributor to climate change: it is responsible for an estimated 18% of human caused emissions are from animal agriculture. Animal agriculture is also responsible for 44% of methane emissions and 44% of nitrous oxide emissions, two particularly bad greenhouse gases (GHGs). A total of 26% of emissions are from food more broadly (58% of which is from animal products, and 50% of which is from just beef and lamb).

 Why are emissions higher for animal agriculture? GHG emissions in animal agriculture result from the methane that is released from the digestive processes of animals, as well as animal manure. When land is converted to animal agriculture, this results in a loss of stored carbon. And we also have to include the fossil fuels used to produce mineral fertilizers for feed production. Climate Nexus estimates that replacing beef with plants in your diet reduces the GHG emissions of that food by 96%.

 Water Footprint

 We’ve talked about this before on the podcast: most of our water footprint comes from the indirect water usage that it takes to make our food. And generally speaking, meat is a lot more water-intensive to produce than plant-based food. Per calorie, beef is 10x more water-intensive than vegetables, and 3x as water-intensive at nuts. Nuts are the most water intensive category of plant-based food. Chicken is actually slightly less water-intensive to produce than nuts (per calorie), but the difference is fairly minor.

 Air Pollution

 Animal agriculture is also really bad for the air, and that is making us sick. In addition to the release of GHGs, animal agriculture produces particulate matter.

 Ambient air pollution is responsible for about 8% of all deaths annually, according to the WHO. Particulate matter is harmful to human health – it affects lung function and can aggravate other conditions (such as heart and lung disease), even leading to death. In many places like the US and Europe, the biggest source of fine-particulate air pollution isn’t cars; it’s agriculture. That fine particulate pollution comes from dry manure, feathers, bits of feed, and animal dander. When those break down, they’re released into the air.

 Eutrophication

 Animal agriculture also pollutes our waterways, leading to eutrophication. Climate Nexus estimates that replacing beef with plants in your diet reduces nitrogen fertilizer use by 94%.

Sources of eutrophication in animal agriculture include: nitrogen fertilizer run-off and leaching; manure run-off and leaching; and aquaculture. Aquaculture farms generate concentrated amounts of nitrogen and phosphorous from excrement, uneaten food, and organic waste (dead fishies).

 In addition to polluting our freshwater, this is creating something called “ocean dead-zones”. Basically, run-off of nitrogen and phosphorous creates low-oxygen areas that affect fish reproduction or even kill fish. There are more than 400 ocean dead-zones worldwide. The size of ocean dead zones has quadrupled since 1950. And most of that increase has been in coastal areas proximate to agricultural production. Coastal eutrophication from animal agriculture also contributes to ocean acidification.

Kyla’s Notes

Cheese rennet makes her sad.

Episode 02 - Alternative Milks

What Are Alternative Milks?

Alternative milks are milk and milk products that are made from plants. They are also sometimes called vegan milk, plant-milk or non-dairy milks (or schmilks, if you’re a Science VS fan). The market for alternative milks is growing rapidly around the world. US non-dairy milk sales increased 61% between 2012 and 2017, according to a study by Mintel.

The most popular alternative milks are almond and soy milk (80% of market share in 2018). Soy milk is the traditional non-dairy milk. It was first sold in the US in the 1950s. But there are lots of alternatives (e.g., coconut, pecan, cashew, quinoa, hazelnut, rice, coconut, pea). Non-dairy milk alternatives can be cereal-based, legume-based, vegetable-based, seed-based, or nut-based. Oat milk is a relatively new entrant, but it ascending quickly in the alternative milk market.

Globally, the alternative milk market reached about $18.5 billion USD in 2018. By 2024, it is expected that the global alternative milk market will reach $38 billion USD, according to market research. Although this is a widespread trend, demand is growing the fastest in the Asia-Pacific region

Major alternative milk brands include Silk, Almond Breeze, and Rice Dream. Some newer entrants include Oatly, Califia Farms, New Barn Organics, Ripple Foods, Innocent, Mooala, and Malk.

Which Alternative Milk is Best?

Health

A big portion of the market for non-dairy milk is driven by health concerns. While this is a perfectly good reason to choose one product over another, we didn’t focus on it because it isn’t an ethical consideration. Non-dairy milks are not nutritionally equivalent to cow’s milk (although some vegan milks are fortified with nutrients like calcium, vitamin D, and vitamin B12 to make them more comparable).
Kyla mentioned a couple statistics on global lactose intolerance, including that “65% of the human population has a reduced ability to digest lactose after infancy”. You can read more about that at the US National Library of Medicine website.

Animal Welfare

All of the alternative milks we’re discussing are plant-based, but they may not necessarily be vegan. Many of them are, but some use honey or other animal-based substances in some of their products.  Usually the company’s website will tell you whether their products are vegan or not.

Environment

Assessing environmental impact is complicated. No single indicator can give us a holistic impression of what is environmentally best. Some common environmental indicators include land use, water use, emissions, and energy intensity. Generally speaking, dairy milk fares poorly on all of these environmental criteria when compared with alternative milks. But it gets a bit more complicated when it comes to choosing which non-dairy milk is the best.

Land Use: It’s a Matter of L and D

Cultivating a crop takes land, and that means diverting land use from other purposes. Agricultural land use contributes to deforestation and climate change because it requires the conversion of existing ecosystems like wetlands and forests, which are carbon sinks. There can also be social justice issues when agricultural land use pushes people out of their communities. Agricultural land use is a big challenge because of its scale: agriculture covers about 40% of the world’s land area. So, if you are concerned about environmental issues, it’s best to support an alternative milk that requires relatively less land to grow.

On land use, all four of the mainstream non-dairy milks do pretty well. They are all substantially better than their dairy counterparts. And the four main non-dairy milks - rice milk, soy milk, oat milk, and almond milk - all require relatively similar amounts of land to produce. However, oat and soy milk are slightly worse than rice/almond milk.

There have been some recent reports about deforestation and the displacement of indigenous peoples as a result of soy farming. This is absolutely a concern, but keep in mind that 90% of soybean crops go into animal feed. So, most of the land displacement occurring from soy is actually consumed indirectly in the form of chicken, pork, beef, farmed fish, eggs, and dairy.

Land use is also connected to other environmental consequences. Fertilizer run-off can pollute drinking water and accelerate eutrophication.

Oat milk is an interesting alternative from the perspective of soil sustainability. Some experts argue that increasing biodiversity in crop rotations can help farmers to use less pesticides. Since corn and soybeans are the two staple crops in the typical rotation, some experts suggest that adding a third crop (like oats) to the rotation can introduce big improvements for water pollution, soil erosion, and crop yields.

Emissions: Cashews Don’t Fart

Food production is responsible for a quarter of all human-produced greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Dairy milk produces more than double the GHG emissions of its non-dairy counterparts, per glass. Amongst the non-dairy alternatives, there are minor differences - with rice milk at the high end and almond milk at the low end - but in general emission rates are similar.

Water Footprint

Water footprints measure the amount of water used to produce each of the goods and services that we use. It’s an important measure to think about, because so much of our water usage comes from indirect sources - from the water that is used to make the things that we buy. And it is especially important when we’re talking about food: about 90% of the water a person consumes comes from the food they eat or the water used to make it. We might drink 3 litres of water each day, but the average water footprint for a Canadian is 6,392 litres per day.

Water footprint is a big differentiator for alternative milks. Although almond and rice milk still have a smaller water footprint than dairy milk, they are much thirstier than soy and oat milk. A single glass of almond milk requires 74 litres of water to produce - more than a typical shower. This is because of the water intensity of the crop itself: almonds require six times more water to grow than oats.

As with most environmental metrics, it matters a lot where a crop is produced. That’s another thing that puts almond milk on the negative side of the ledger: almonds are a water intense crop produced mainly in California, a region which is at high-risk of droughts. And unlike crops that can be left fallow, almond trees require water even in drought years. In contrast, oat production is a lot less geographically concentrated.

Energy Use

We weren’t able to find much about the relative energy intensity of making alternative milks, unfortunately.

Labour and Human Rights

 Most of the information out there on non-dairy milk focuses on health and environmental sustainability. It was difficult to find information on labour and human rights, even though we know that agricultural workers can experience some of the most difficult working conditions.

1.3 billion people - approximately one-third of the global workforce are employed as agricultural workers. Agricultural workers are often employed informally, paid poorly, and subject to unsafe workplace practices. They are, somewhat ironically, among the most food-insecure. More than 170,000 agricultural workers are killed doing their jobs every year. And the risk of a fatal accident is twice as high in food production than in any other sector, according to the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food. Although most of the agricultural workforce is employed in developing countries, working conditions are also a concern in wealthy countries, who draw on temporary migrant workers for much of the workforce.

Generally speaking, crops like almonds and oats are less labour-intensive to harvest than fruits like avocados. But there are still significant labour concerns. And this is an area seems to be largely missing from the alternative milk conversation. Having said that, there are a few alternative milk companies out there that have ethical labour policies.

Oatly, a Swedish oat milk producer, sources its organic oats (it also uses conventional oats) from Swedish oat producers that have KRAV-certification. KRAV is a third-party organics standard that meets European Union organics regulations. KRAV also has labour and human rights provisions, including housing conditions for migrant workers.

One newer brand called REBBL, which makes plant-based “elixirs”, claims to ethically source its primary ingredients -- although they don’t use a specific certification scheme.

The Winner: Oat Milk?

Oat milk has become the darling of non-dairy milk advocates. It has three times the protein of almond milk and twice the fibre (according to Mother Jones). It uses less water - and grows in more places.

Is it better to buy or to make your own non-dairy milk? For our money, we would choose to make oat milk. It’s super easy, uses less waste, and you can control what goes into it.