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The world's first octopus farm - should it go ahead?

ParaSeoul

Member
News that the world's first commercial octopus farm is closer to becoming reality has been met with dismay by scientists and conservationists. They argue such intelligent "sentient" creatures - considered able to feel pain and emotions - should never be commercially reared for food.
Playing with a Giant Pacific Octopus is part of Stacey Tonkin's job. When she lifts the lid on the tank to feed the creature known as DJ - short for Davy Jones - he often scoots out from his cave to see her and stick his arms on the glass. That's if he's in a good mood. Octopuses live to be about four - so, at one year old, she says that he's the equivalent of a teenager.
"He definitely exhibits what you'd expect a teenager to be like - some days he's really grumpy and sleeps all day. Then other days he's really playful and active and wants to charge around his tank and show off."
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The level of awareness that Stacey witnesses first-hand is to be recognised in UK law through an amendment to the Animal Welfare (Sentience) Bill.
The change has come after a team of experts sifted through more than 300 scientific studies and concluded that octopuses were "sentient beings" and there was "strong scientific evidence" that they could experience pleasure, excitement and joy - but also pain, distress and harm.
The authors said they were "convinced that high-welfare octopus farming was impossible" and the government "could consider a ban on imported farmed octopus" in future.
But octopus tentacles sizzle in pans, coil on plates and float in soups around the world - from Asia to the Mediterranean, and increasingly the USA. In South Korea, the creatures are sometimes eaten alive. The number of octopuses in the wild are decreasing and prices are going up. An estimated 350,000 tonnes are caught each year - more than 10 times the number caught in 1950.
Against that background, the race to discover the secret to breeding the octopus in captivity has been going on for decades. It's difficult - the larvae only eat live food and need a carefully controlled environment.

The Spanish multinational, Nueva Pescanova (NP) appears to have beaten companies in Mexico, Japan and Australia, to win the race. It has announced that it will start marketing farmed octopus next summer, to sell it in 2023.
The company built on research done by the Spanish Oceanographic Institute (Instituto Español de Oceanografía), looking at the breeding habits of the Common Octopus - Octopus vulgaris. NP's commercial farm will be based inland, close to the port of Las Palmas in the Canary Islands according to PortSEurope.
It's reported the farm will produce 3,000 tonnes of octopus per year. The company has been quoted as saying it will help to stop so many octopus being taken from the wild.
 

RJMacready73

Simps for Amouranth
Seriously though we need to get away from eating sentient creatures and this coming from a huge meat fan who sources from actual local free range farms where at least the animals lead a decent enough life before ending up in my belly, this mass farming shite to satisfy the fucking Chinese and all the other cunts who could give 2 fucks how an animal is raised and slaughtered as long as its in their soup boils my blood, once they get lab grown meat to taste similar to real meat i'll be making the switch.
 

Irobot82

Member
If you don't like it and actually care, come up with a better solution.

The world will never be vegan. If you truly want to change the world and make it more ethical place. Invent some lab grown meat that is indistinguishable and cheaper to make than real meat. Then the world will change for the better. Otherwise, sadly, you are just barking into the wind.
 

RJMacready73

Simps for Amouranth
If you don't like it and actually care, come up with a better solution.

The world will never be vegan. If you truly want to change the world and make it more ethical place. Invent some lab grown meat that is indistinguishable and cheaper to make than real meat. Then the world will change for the better. Otherwise, sadly, you are just barking into the wind.
that's the thing were already in the process of doing that, its only a matter of time before taste and economics hopefully start to dig into the profits of these farms, i just don't see why we need to add another species group to the mass market farming practice when we know how fucking utterly horrible they are and especially when we know that octopus are extremely intelligent creatures and will no doubt figure out what the fuck is being done to them
 

Ikutachi

Member
Their rather short lifespan is unfortunate given how very intelligent they are. They can teach themselves to unscrew the lid of a jar.
 

FunkMiller

Gold Member
If you don't like it and actually care, come up with a better solution.

The world will never be vegan. If you truly want to change the world and make it more ethical place. Invent some lab grown meat that is indistinguishable and cheaper to make than real meat. Then the world will change for the better. Otherwise, sadly, you are just barking into the wind.

Just eat the stupid ones.

Cows? Thick as shit. Yum yum.

Chickens? Dumb as a bag of rocks. Nom nom.

Octopi? Clever little eight legged fuckers. No eat.
 
There was an octopus in my marine bio class that would escape its tank at night to crawl to another one to eat the stuff that was in there. Prof couldn't figure out how stuff was disappearing from the other tank till he caught the lil bugger on a camera he set up.

I was never a fan of the taste/texture anyways, but I won't eat them. When The Arrival aliens show up I want my conscience clean.
 

BossLackey

Gold Member
I think octopuses are really cool and clearly very intelligent. I don't love the thought of an octopus farm, but I eat a lot of pretty intelligent animals.
 

IDKFA

I am Become Bilbo Baggins
Seriously though we need to get away from eating sentient creatures and this coming from a huge meat fan who sources from actual local free range farms where at least the animals lead a decent enough life before ending up in my belly, this mass farming shite to satisfy the fucking Chinese and all the other cunts who could give 2 fucks how an animal is raised and slaughtered as long as its in their soup boils my blood, once they get lab grown meat to taste similar to real meat i'll be making the switch.

I'm not a fan of industrial farming to satisfy the fast food industry. I do eat meat, but it's from a butcher or supermarket. I almost always avoid fast food.

Your comment about moving away from eating sentient creatures is interesting. All creatures are sentient in one way or another, so the only way we would do that is if we all became at least vegetarian. Somehow, I can't see a majority of the world going down this path.

And why should they? Humans are omnivores and meat is a large part of our dietary needs. We shouldn't stop eating animals because they are sentient. That doesn't make any sense. What we should do is cut back on the meat we produce. I dread to think how much meat is thrown away and wasted in the fast food industry. Reduce the fast food and we can cut back on industrial farming.
 
If you don't like it and actually care, come up with a better solution.

The world will never be vegan. If you truly want to change the world and make it more ethical place. Invent some lab grown meat that is indistinguishable and cheaper to make than real meat. Then the world will change for the better. Otherwise, sadly, you are just barking into the wind.
the world could be vegan if it was the only option, i eat veggie burgers and sausges which are barely different to the real deal (minus the mushed up hoofs, eyeballs and toenails of course)
 
This kind of thing is probably our best, REALISTIC, solution to ocean depletion. We aren’t going to stop eating animal proteins anytime soon. And fishing for them in the ocean is having a pretty big impact on the life that lives there. Ocean farming is a way to alleviate some of the pressures on life there until we come up with a viable way to replicate animal proteins in a way that people find palatable.
 
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Catphish

Member
Gonna vote NO on this. The documentary My Octupus Teacher gave me a whole new appreciation for those animals.
 

Irobot82

Member
the world could be vegan if it was the only option, i eat veggie burgers and sausges which are barely different to the real deal (minus the mushed up hoofs, eyeballs and toenails of course)
Thanks I needed a good chuckle. Yes if there were no animals in the world to eat yes, humans would only eat plants. Duh.
 
this is a really bad idea. octopus are literal aliens, a recent study supports this. their response is going to be cataclysmic.

humans have no idea what sort of war they're about to start.
 

Atrus

Gold Member
Farming for our supply can help offset the environmental burden but the challenge is that Octopuses are opportunistic hunters and are cannabalistic.

Another, is that we feed seafood fish and so increase the ecological burden. We need to try and change that calculus in some way to make it more sustainable.

As far as for not eating them at all is concerned, tough luck. They’re quite tasty.
 
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Why must humanity be so hungry? Don't forget that in 3000 years we must save them after they teach us their language and we learn to communicate.
 

gela94

Member
Seriously though we need to get away from eating sentient creatures and this coming from a huge meat fan who sources from actual local free range farms where at least the animals lead a decent enough life before ending up in my belly, this mass farming shite to satisfy the fucking Chinese and all the other cunts who could give 2 fucks how an animal is raised and slaughtered as long as its in their soup boils my blood, once they get lab grown meat to taste similar to real meat i'll be making the switch.
I hope you know that food is not about taste but about nutrition, my questions would be is lab meat nutrion wise the same . .I have my doubts, unfortunately.
 

zombrex

Member
Of course, it should go ahead.
Cows and other mammals also have feelings and personalities yet we are eating them.
The movement to protect octopi is just ridiculous. A bunch of soft, lefty vegans work with them in labs so they get more attention.
 
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Blade2.0

Member
I love Tako Yaki, but have tried cutting back ordering it since I found out they were so intelligent. I'd rather we farm them, though, like salmon, then fuck with their natural environment.
 

RJMacready73

Simps for Amouranth
I hope you know that food is not about taste but about nutrition, my questions would be is lab meat nutrion wise the same . .I have my doubts, unfortunately.
Im pretty sure they could engineer in all sorts of nutrients as I said I don't know the ins and outs of it but it's a massively growing industry and I for one would be happy to switch and I pretty much eat meat near every day
 

Tams

Member
I... don't really have a problem with this. It would only be a problem for me if it were something about equal to us in sentience/intelligence, at which point we'd probably be communicating with such a species and have either come to peace or fought each other.

I'm not a huge octopus meat fan, but it's better than ravaging the seas and oceans for them.

As for the ethics of eating meat: we are omnivores. If a lion can eat a antelope or a bear a salmon, then I can have my damn bacon sarnie. I do try and get free range meat, etc. (mainly for the quality, tbh). And if anyone is in doubt that we are omnivores, then show me an example of a vegetarian (or worse vegan) who hasn't had to make drastic and intrusive changes to their life to stay at the same capacity. Vegetarians/vegans have been found to be lacking in a lot of minerals and vitamins that meat eaters get readily from meat. And things like iron are less readily available in plants, so veggies/vegans have to eat a lot more to get the levels of nutrients they require.

tl;dr: still gonna eat meat.
 

AV

We ain't outta here in ten minutes, we won't need no rocket to fly through space
Octopus is delicious and I already eat a lot of pig and cow.

I Have No Idea Shrug GIF


I'd love to think that all my food is reasonably responsibly sourced, but at the end of the day I don't know and obviously don't care enough to make it a certainty.
 
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