Protect the Fish

What does the fish industry do when the water’s ammonia levels rise even higher than usual? They starve the fish, so they won’t produce more excretions. The starvation can last many days, sometimes even an entire week, and can reach the point where the fish are so hungry, they start to eat each other.

Fish in the tanks swim in overcrowded conditions in water contaminated with excretions. One worker recounts an incident in which grey mullet fish were covered in feces, and the stench made it hard for him to breathe. Despite this, the fish were sent to market. One test revealed high levels of nitrite documented in the bass tanks, but the workers didn’t seem bothered: “A laboratory worker would say that it’s very dangerous, not good, but it’s fine with us.”

The fish suffer from many parasites, and in an effort to deal with them, pools are treated with chemical insecticides such as copper sulfate and formaldehyde. The World Health Organization classifies formaldehyde as a known carcinogen. In one town, they also use the dangerous substance Bromex, even though it has been banned from use (with a claim that they had been allowed to liquidate their inventory). Despite the poisons, the parasite problem persists. One of the workers confesses that the rules of Kashrut only refer to parasites which are visible to the naked eye, and in reality, the fish being sold are also “full of vermin”. The industrial quantities of fish at these factories don’t allow for the individual checking of each fish for parasites and diseases.

“There are no fish without diseases”, admits one of the workers. In photographs one can see, for example, fish with extremely protruding eyes, a symptom which likely indicates streptococcus, a virus which can also infect humans - yet despite this, the fish are still sold to consumers. Even though antibiotics are used, the death rates of fish are high. Under industrial conditions, fish get sick or injured and die all the time: in the tanks, during sorting, during transfer between containers, or en route to the factory. Contaminants such as Vibrio also affect the workers and consumers.

One of the fish industry’s secrets is that its young fish are often given hormones to cause a “sex change”. The fish tanks are flooded with male hormones so that all the fish will grow up as males and there will be no females at all. One worker admits: “One of the problems with this method… is that it’s not so… it doesn’t sound good.”