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Comment by nickparker | Hacker News Reader

Beef and pork are significantly worse than seafood in terms of environmental impact. There's nothing to celebrate in the sources of American protein.

If America was as hungry for seafood as East Asia, fisheries would have depleted enough to create frighteningly high prices long ago, and we'd probably have a thriving aquaculture industry today.

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I live near the Great Lakes, so there is literally no such thing as a safe fish to eat. Every fish has a limit to how much you can eat and how often -- that is if you are an adult male, if female or child you are far more limited yet.

Especially near me, where the waterways are also toiletways. You'd have to go out into the lake to escape the toilet and dioxin-laden water, where the fish should never be eaten, and even then you have, like I said above, a limit depending on how much toxic fish you feel comfortable ingesting.

I lived in Houston where you cant eat anything near the coast. When I went to Australia it was incredible you can fish and eat almost everywhere/everything near the coast.

Don't fish for dinner near big cities in Australia though. It can be just as bad as anywhere else.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-08-16/health-warning-over-fi...

http://www.fishingworld.com.au/news/toxins-found-at-popular-...

Those links appear to warn of fishing around Sydney harbour and Oyster Bay. I still would bet almost anywhere along the proper beach is at least an order of magnitude safer than in comparable regions of the states. Many beaches I consistently saw heaps of guys surf casting.

Many people eat the fish in Sydney Harbour too. Despite being warned not too.

Sydney's ocean beaches are often closed to swimmers because of pollution. Sydney disposes of its sewerage via deep ocean outlets, and this can often make the water quality very bad, depending on ocean currents.

I'm not sure my post warranted a down-vote. Is it because I contradicted you? or do you think I am wrong? I lived on a houseboat on The Georges river/Botany Bay for many years, and have spent some serious time on Sydney's waterways, and offshore. I wouldn't eat anything caught in Sydney's rivers or beaches knowingly.

Hey I am not one of the people who downvoted you. I think while yes there is a point to be made that Sydney/Australia also has water quality issues the problem in general when you compare the US to Australia is quite a big difference.

> Many beaches I consistently saw heaps of guys surf casting.

You can easily observe locals fishing in the river(s) running through Shanghai. The fact that they do it doesn't mean those fish are safe to eat.

Sure but Australia has a $22/hr min wage and absurdly good welfare and you can eat potato chips on it all day ig you want. China is rougher. But yes of course just because many do something does not mean its a good idea, but analyzing what others are doing may be food for thought when deciding where a placr is relaticely good to fish or not.

I'm very skeptical of that claim, particularly wrt pork. Once we've completely depleted the oceans of wild fish stock and rely entirely aquaculture, then it'll be a fair comparison.

According to this article, based on CO2 production farmed salmon has the same impact as pork:

  http://www.ewg.org/meateatersguide/a-meat-eaters-guide-to-climate-change-health-what-you-eat-matters/climate-and-environmental-impacts/

And chicken has a substantially lower impact than either.

I wouldn't trust anything from EWG. They are an agenda driven pseudoscience organization. They actively criticize conventional agriculture (see their "dirty" dozen list) and vehemently oppose genetic engineering.

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