You may have noticed this editorial in the Union-Tribune supporting a project by Hubbs-SeaWorld to locate a fish farm off the coast of San Diego. This is the first mainstream press I’ve seen about the project, though its backers have been working to build support with government, commerce, and environmental groups for a few months now.

Basically, Hubbs-SeaWorld wants to apply the model of factory pork farming to the oceans off San Diego. In doing so, they apply the same arguments that, say, Smithfield does when they want to locate a plant in a small Carolina town: it will be an economic driver, it will provide jobs and help the tax base, and environmental impact will be minimal due to new technology etc. etc. etc.

Which is bunk. Concentrated animal feedlot operations degrade their environment, propagate antibiotic-resistant disease, and ultimately provide second-rate nutrition, because the animals aren’t eating their natural food. Feedlots’ “positive economic effects” are simply that they exploit certain subsidies in our economy (commodity crops and unregulated environmental damages) to externalize most of their costs and thus make money for their operators.

Here’s a PDF of a presentation that the Hubbs folks were showing this fall to various groups, including San Diego Coastkeeper and others.

Note a few passages:

Researchers and feed companies have made substantial progress in substituting other ingredients (for example, vegetable proteins and vegetable oil) for fishmeal and fish oil in aquaculture feeds, a trend that will continue for simple economic reasons because it provides greater price stability.

This translates, I believe, to “to save money, we’re going to try to feed the fish commodity corn and soybeans.” Just as in the movement of cattle to feedlots, they’re saying we can raise cheap fish by feeding them something that’s not their natural diet, but which is cheap. Of course, commodity corn is grown primarily through the use of fossil fuel, and is a big cause of the degradation of the soil and of rural communities in the Midwest, and the water in the Gulf of Mexico. Also, fish eating corn and soybeans is gross. I’m just sayin.

Ammonia and urea, which are excreted by fish, are quickly oxidized by marine bacteria and become nitrate, which is a basic plant nutrient.

Most factory farms quickly test the ability of their surrounding environment to metabolize waste. All organic waste are subsumed into a healthy ecosystem. The problem is that concentrating animals tends to concentrate and increase the waste, and the surrounding ecosystem can’t handle it. Then you get, say, pink lagoons.

Antibiotics are used to treat disease in all forms of animal farming.

This is, of course, fatuous — animal farming pre-dates the development of antibiotics by, like, 8,000 years. By “all forms of animal farming” here, Hubbs-SeaWorld means “all factory farming in which animals are unnaturally concentrated.”

The reason that industrial farms started using antibiotics is that animals living densely in pens, with no exercise and a limited, unnatural diet, turn out to be fabulous breeding grounds for pathogens. It’s apparent that Hubbs-SeaWorld is going to apply the factory model to our local ocean.

Accumulation of solid wastes under a mariculture facility can now be predicted by powerful new computer models…

Never mind my earlier concerns, it’s all good now that we have powerful new computer models.

Hubbs-SeaWorld’s general argument in favor of this factory farm is that the nationwide demand for fish is so high that we have to resort to industrial production of fish to meet it. Which makes is sound as though the demand is totally unrelated to supply.

Maybe people are willing to pay the high prices for ocean fish, because it’s the last kind of food that hasn’t been enervated by factory farming. Maybe there is a high demand for farmed fish such as tilapia because the prices are so low, due to the externalization of its costs.

Either way, it is by no means necessary for us to permit a factory farm in our ocean to meet the so-called “demand” for ocean fish. Its backers might well make money, but the rest of us will be left holding the bag.

My impression is that residents of Tar Heel would agree.