[29-Food 视频] 捕鱼畜牧要节制 | Rearing fish and catching animals

Animals have always been an important part of the human diet. Once hunted in the wild, people first began keeping animals for food around ten thousand years ago. But animals give us more than just meat. They give us milk, eggs, products, like leather, manure for fertilising the earth and, until the invention of machinery, animals were an important workforce for the land.

Today, more than 300 million tons of meat are produced every year. That’s equivalent to 55 times the weight of the Great Pyramid of Giza! Most of this meat is eaten by people in wealthy countries. But, today people in developing countries are also starting to eat more meat. That means the way we produce meat to keep up with demand has had to change. And as the meat farming industry has grown, people have become more concerned about animal welfare, the way animals are looked after on intensive farms.

The old-style picture-book image of a farm with its farm animals could not be further from the reality of intensive farms that exist today. Poultry, or chicken farming, is the fastest growing in the meat industry. To keep prices low, chickens are often raised in sheds in their thousands, sometimes with little or no daylight. 

Because of concerns for how animals are treated, some people choose to eat free-range chicken, from chickens that are allowed to roam outside for part of the day – even though it is more expensive to produce as the animals need more land. 

Unlike farming animals, much of the fishing industry still relies on catching from the wild – from our seas and rivers. Fishing was one of the earliest forms of hunting. For thousands of years, people trapped or caught fish in nearby rivers and lakes. The sea, too, has always offered rich-pickings for fishermen, catching not just fish but crabs, octopuses and other sea creatures.

Sailing boats were replaced by steam-powered fishing trawlers in the 19th century, and since then, the sea food trade has intensified. 

In the past 100 years, the fishing industry has grown so fast, and on such a scale, that now scientists are worried we're overfishing - and putting future fish stocks at risk.

By using large nets, deep in the ocean, baby fish can be caught at the same time as fully-grown fish, meaning there is no chance of a new generation of fish in the sea. 

It seems as though the scale of fishing in the world is not sustainable if we want to make sure we still have enough fish in the sea to feed us in the future. And as people in the world buy more and more meat, we also need to find better ways to look after our animals and to treat them well.

Perhaps more importantly, we have to make sure the diversity of animals on our farms and in the oceans is not destroyed by our seemingly limitless demand for meat and fish.