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Note: This post is written in a personal capacity. The views expressed here are our own and do not represent those of any organisation we're affiliated with. We're grateful to Bob Fischer, Tobias Leenaert, Pablo Moleman, Felix Werdermann, and Kevin Xia for their valuable input and feedback, which does not imply endorsement of the arguments presented. While we've done our best to base this post on careful research and reasoning, we don't claim to be experts on this topic. Our aim is not to assert a final conclusion, but to explore an idea we find worth discussing, and we'd be really grateful for any thoughts that might challenge or deepen our understanding.

This post explores whether eating sardines and anchovies could overall result in more good than harm and whether the consumption of these fish can be aligned with the ethics of veganism, despite departing from conventional vegan norms. It examines nutrition, sustainability, and animal ethics, as well as the broader implications for societal progress and animal advocacy. Importantly, it is not an argument for the consumption of fish in general. Fish species differ significantly across key dimensions, and sardines and anchovies stand out in several relevant respects, as will be discussed in detail.

🥣 Health & Nutrition

Uncertainty in Nutrition Science

Nutrition science is one of the least robust areas of research. It involves studying both a highly complex organism (humans) and a highly complex intervention (diet). As a result, it faces several fundamental challenges:

  • Long-term studies are observational and therefore cannot reliably separate correlation from causation.
  • Diets correlate with lifestyle factors like exercise and income, which cannot be fully controlled for.
  • Dietary data is typically based on memory and self-reporting, making it unreliable.

Consequently, robust conclusions are very hard to establish. While a well-planned plant-based diet appears adequate for most healthy adults, it remains uncertain whether avoiding all animal products is optimal, especially with regard to long-term health, where small deficiencies can take decades to manifest and may be hard to reverse. From a nutritional perspective, given that human physiology evolved on an omnivorous diet, it may therefore be prudent to include a small amount of animal products in our diet.

Limitations of Supplementation

While combining a plant-based diet with supplements may be a viable strategy to achieve optimal long-term health outcomes without the inclusion of animal products in principle, it comes with practical limitations:

  • Supplements can be expensive and difficult to obtain, especially EPA/DHA and certain carninutrients.
  • Many people do not manage to take supplements consistently, limiting the benefits.
  • Whole foods may offer better nutrient synergy and higher bioavailability than isolated supplements.[1]

  • Animal products may contain unknown beneficial compounds that are missing from supplements.
  • Supplement quality is not subject to regulatory control, raising concerns about safety and efficacy.[2]

Importantly, if people experience health issues on plant-based diets due to suboptimal nutrition, they may abandon the diet altogether and advise others against it. In some cases, they may even publicly criticise veganism in ways that undermine the movement's credibility and reach. Ensuring that people can meet their nutritional needs reliably is therefore not only essential for individual health but also critical to the long-term success of the movement.

Potential Health Benefits of Fish

Observational data from large cohort studies such as the Adventist Health Study 2 and the EPIC-Oxford study show that, although vegans tend to have lower blood pressure[3] and cholesterol levels[4], pescetarians achieve better outcomes than both vegans and vegetarians in several key health metrics, including all-cause mortality[5], colorectal cancer risk[6], and stroke risk[7]. It is further worth noting that these studies focus exclusively on clinical endpoints like mortality and disease incidence, not on functional measures such as subjective well-being or cognitive performance, which may be precisely where some of the advantages of including fish would be most pronounced. More research is needed, but there is good reason to suspect that sardines and anchovies in particular may offer meaningful health benefits: As short-lived fish low on the food chain, they accumulate only minimal levels of mercury, and any microplastics they ingest tend to accumulate in the gut, which is usually removed before consumption. Nutritionally, they offer an abundance of nutrients that are often limited or less bioavailable in plant-based foods. Sardines and anchovies are exceptionally rich in EPA/DHA, long-chain omega-3 fatty acids absent from plant-based foods except for microalgae, and also provide ARA, another long-chain fatty acid virtually exclusive to animal products. Furthermore, they offer highly bioavailable forms of minerals and vitamins often considered critical in plant-based diets, including calcium, heme iron, zinc, selenium, iodine, vitamins A, D3, K2, B3, B7, B12, along with the vitamin-like nutrient choline. They also contain a range of carninutrients such as creatine, taurine, collagen, carnosine, and anserine, which are effectively only found in animal products and are linked to benefits for longevity and cognitive function.[8] [9] [10] [11] [12] Finally, they also represent a highly accessible protein source rich in all essential amino acids, helping to diversify plant-based diets where many high-protein options rely on soy, pea or wheat. Overall, sardines and anchovies effectively address several nutritional challenges common in plant-based diets. The table below summarises key nutritional information.[13]

 Sardines (100 g)Anchovies (100 g)

Recommended[14]

Comments
Energy~208 kcal~210 kcal~2000–3000 kcal 
EPA/DHA~1.4 g~1.5 g~0.5–1 gNot present in plant-based foods except for microalgae
ARA~70 mg~95 mg~100–150 mgNot present in plant-based foods
Calcium~382 mg~232 mg~1000 mgLimited intake on plant-based diets
Iron~2.9 mg~4.6 mg~10–20 mgMore bioavailable than non-heme iron in plant-based foods
Zinc~1.3 mg~2.4 mg~10–15 mgLimited intake on plant-based diets
Selenium~53 µg~37 µg~60–70 µgLimited intake on plant-based diets
Iodine~30 µg~35 µg~150–200 µgNo reliable plant-based source
Vitamin A~32 µg~12 µg~700–900 µgMore bioavailable than beta-carotene in plant-based foods
Vitamin D3~4.8 µg~1.7 µg~20–50 µgMore bioavailable and effective than D2 in plant-based foods
Vitamin K2~20 µg~15 µg~60–80 µgMore bioavailable and effective than K1 in plant-based foods
Vitamin B3 ~5 mg~20 mg~13–16 mgLower bioavailability in plant-based foods
Vitamin B7~10 µg~8 µg~30–40 µgLower bioavailability in plant-based foods
Vitamin B12~8.9 µg~0.9 µg~2.4–4 µgNo reliable plant-based source
Choline~75 mg~85 mg~400–550 mgLimited intake on plant-based diets
Creatine~0.9 g~0.7 g~3–5 gNot present in plant-based foods
Taurine~120 mg~220 mg~150–4000 mgNot present in plant-based foods
Collagen~1.5 g~2 g~2.5–15 gNot present in plant-based foods
Carnosine~50 mg~60 mg~500–1000 mgNot present in plant-based foods
Anserine~30 mg~35 mg~500–750 mgNot present in plant-based foods
Protein~26 g~29 g~1.2–1.6 g/kg of
body weight
More balanced amino acid profile than most plant-based foods

🌍 Sustainability

Resources and Emissions

Sardines and anchovies are always wild-caught, as their natural abundance, fast reproductive cycles, and shoaling behaviour make aquaculture economically unviable. As a result, their production footprint is remarkably low:

  • No land is required, since they are always caught in the wild.
  • No freshwater is required, apart from the minimal amounts used for standard cleaning and processing.
  • No feed is required, since they feed naturally in the wild, primarily on plankton.
  • GHG emissions are very low compared to other protein sources, for the most part because they are not farmed. See below for the GHG emissions per 100 gram of protein for various protein sources.[15] [16] [17]

Fish Populations

Sardines and anchovies are broadcast spawners with short lifespans and high reproductive rates, which makes them highly resilient to fishing pressure and has ensured their consistent abundance worldwide.[18] On top of that, their populations are well-managed in European waters through annually adjusted and effectively enforced catch quotas.[19] While sustained increases in demand could potentially create political pressure to raise them, especially when short-term economic goals take priority, these quotas are aligned with the long-term interests of the fishing industry and therefore generally supported by it. Most sardines and anchovies are currently used for aquaculture feed and pet food, but the fact that many feed producers are already shifting to plant-based alternatives shows that such a transition is feasible.[20] Since total catch volumes are capped, increased human consumption is therefore unlikely to raise fishing pressure but rather redirect use from feed to food. From a food justice perspective, it is important to note that rising European demand would overwhelmingly be met by local, cost-efficient EU fisheries, since fisheries in the Global South primarily produce fishmeal for export rather than food for human consumption. Overall, the greatest threat to sardine and anchovy populations is not fishing, but climate change, which disrupts their food supply and spawning patterns through changes in ocean temperatures and currents. Even so, only a small fraction of bony fish species are considered threatened with extinction, reflecting the resilience of species like sardines and anchovies. See below for the estimated percentage of threatened species by different species groups.[21]

Ecological Impacts

Sardines and anchovies are a key food source for many marine predators. While regulated fishing can help maintain their populations, current management practices often disregard the impacts on dependent predator species. However, many of these predators are highly mobile, have broad diets, and evolved alongside the natural boom and bust cycles of sardines and anchovies, allowing them to adapt and switch to alternative prey when necessary.[22] Wild sardine and anchovy fishing also results in very low bycatch.[23] As pelagic fish that swim in dense shoals near the surface, they are caught with purse seine nets rather than bottom trawls, avoiding seabed damage and minimising the risk of plastic pollution through ghost gear.

🐟 Animal Ethics

Moral Weights

Rethink Priorities assesses the moral weights of different sentient species by estimating how wide their ranges of possible positive and negative experiences are, using factors like brain structure, learning ability, behavioural flexibility, emotional capacity, and social behaviour.[24] Although sardines and anchovies have not been directly assessed, it is possible to make an informed estimate on the basis of their simple, instinct-driven behaviours:

  • No pair bonding or parental care (broadcast spawners)
  • No complex hunting behaviour (filter feeders)
  • Limited navigation and learning capabilities

Therefore, sardines and anchovies appear to rank below salmon, who famously navigate thousands of kilometres back to their natal streams to spawn and exhibit complex mating strategies like nest-building and male competition for mates. However, their vertebrate nervous systems, capacity for pain processing, and social behaviours such as shoaling suggest sardines and anchovies may be more cognitively and behaviourally sophisticated than crayfish. In accordance with this, their welfare range is estimated to be ~0.045[25], below salmon but above crayfish, which can serve as a proxy for their moral weight. See below for the welfare range estimates by Rethink Priorities.[26]

While the small body size of sardines and anchovies means that many individuals must be killed to produce a given amount of food, thereby scaling up the moral weight, a meaningful moral cost calculation should extend beyond these direct first-order consequences to account for indirect higher-order consequences, especially given that all food production invariably involves some level of collateral damage, as will be discussed further on.

Fishing vs. Crop Deaths

Crop production kills a large number of animals, many of which have a much higher moral weight than sardines and anchovies. Field mice are crushed by tractors, bird nests are destroyed by harvesters, fish are poisoned by fertiliser run-off, and countless insects are killed by pesticides and other agricultural practices. While reliable data on crop deaths is extremely limited[27], it is plausible that these crop deaths may carry a higher total moral cost than fishing sardines and anchovies. On the other hand, wild animals die constantly in nature due to predation, starvation, and disease, and few survive to old age. It is therefore unclear whether crop deaths cause more suffering than would otherwise occur in nature.

Fishing vs. Natural Deaths

Fishing sardines and anchovies inevitably causes deaths, but what matters ethically is how these compare to the deaths the animals would otherwise face in nature. Sardines and anchovies lay tens to hundreds of thousands of eggs each year, yet fewer than one in a thousand survive to adulthood. When they do, most ultimately die through predation, starvation, or disease. Predation involves sardines and anchovies being pursued, exhausted, and eventually killed by dolphins, large fish, and seabirds, causing both severe mental and physical strain. While the final phase, when the fish are tightly packed into dense formations known as bait balls, may last only several minutes, the strain often begins much earlier during extended periods of chase and herding. Once caught, they are typically swallowed whole and remain alive in the predator's stomach for around 20 minutes, during which they suffocate or are slowly digested by acids and enzymes.[28] Meanwhile, starvation and disease may lead to significantly longer periods of intense suffering, marked by a slow and progressive decline. Commercial fishing on the other hand uses purse seine nets to encircle entire shoals and haul them aboard within 90 to 120 minutes.[29] This usually takes place at night, when the darkness likely reduces stress levels in the fish, as they are calmer and less alert. During the hauling phase, many fish die from crushing as the net tightens, while others die from asphyxiation due to falling oxygen levels. Since direct evidence comparing the subjective distress caused by fishing and natural deaths is limited, it remains unclear which form of death causes greater overall suffering. While human morality distinguishes between intentional killing and agentless dying, this distinction is meaningless from the perspective of the fish. What matters to them is not our intentions, but their own experience, and our thoughts and feelings make no difference to their reality.

Species Survival

It is uncertain whether wild animals currently live net positive lives, but they may have the potential to do so in the future, especially if we develop better ways to reduce their suffering. Since the future will almost certainly contain vastly more individuals than the present due to the many generations yet to come, ensuring the continued existence and flourishing of wild animals could have a substantial positive impact. This suggests that our ethical concern should extend beyond individual animals to the long-term survival of species and the ecosystems that support them. Biodiversity plays a key role in maintaining ecosystem resilience by providing redundancy and adaptability. As it declines, ecosystems become more fragile, raising not only the risk of widespread species loss but also the risk of human extinction, given our dependence on functioning ecosystems. Accordingly, preserving biodiversity may play a critical role in safeguarding the long-term future of humanity. Currently, the leading driver of biodiversity loss is land use change. Given that complex life evolved over billions of years and that extinctions are likely irreversible, there is a strong case for urgent action to prevent further species loss. It may therefore be ethically preferable to prioritise foods that minimise land use change, such as sardines and anchovies.

💡 Societal Implications

Moral Progress

Principles like "don't eat sentient beings" are heuristics that fit within a rights-based moral framework and aim to minimise suffering. Even in cases where they fail to do so due to unintended harmful higher-order consequences, they can still reinforce moral concern for sentient beings, as our moral intuitions are guided more by perceived than by actual suffering: The harm to a fish when we eat it is emotionally more salient than its counterfactual natural death as well as the harm to wild animals caused by land use change or crop deaths when we eat plant-based foods. Given this psychological predisposition, adhering to a rights-based heuristic can promote moral circle expansion and help establish a value system that extends moral consideration to all sentient beings. This is arguably the main reason why conventional veganism prioritises purity at the level of first-order consequences. Establishing fundamental rights for sentient beings may also positively influence how future superintelligent AIs will treat humans and other sentient life, should they adopt prevailing human values. However, rigid adherence to a rights-based heuristic can oversimplify complex realities and undermine its very purpose by overlooking that deviating from purity at the level of first-order consequences can lead to a net positive outcome in some cases. A commitment to optimise outcomes based on a careful assessment of all downstream consequences may therefore better serve the presumed core ethical goal of veganism: minimising the suffering of sentient beings. This may support including certain animals like sardines and anchovies in our diet, provided under conditions that result in less overall harm. More broadly, such a pragmatic approach may help build a more compelling moral framework grounded in impartial truth-seeking and commitment to doing the most good, in alignment with the principles of effective altruism.

Food System Change

Producing plant-based foods currently causes significant harm to animals, particularly through land use change and potentially also through crop deaths. However, technological progress raises the possibility that plant agriculture might one day cause minimal harm to animals, perhaps even none. Adopting a fully plant-based diet and thereby aligning with this long-term vision may help accelerate the transition toward it. In the meantime, sardines and anchovies could be the more ethical choice during this transition, especially since they are much cheaper than plant-based protein sources combined with supplements. This frees up financial resources that can be donated for greater impact toward that vision and also avoids moral licensing, a phenomenon in which an ethical choice leads to a sense of moral satisfaction, thereby reducing the motivation to take further meaningful action, such as donating. Although transitional solutions do carry a risk, as eating habits tend to become entrenched over time, technological progress in alternative proteins such as cellular agriculture could enable a future shift away from eating animals like sardines and anchovies without requiring major behavioural change.

📢 Effective Advocacy

Pragmatism vs. Purity

A simple message like "I'm vegan" is both powerful and easy to communicate, but may alienate those who see it as too rigid or extreme. A more nuanced stance like "I consider myself vegan but eat sardines and anchovies" may confuse or irritate others, especially in settings where time or openness for deeper discussion is limited. Yet in the right context, it can spark curiosity and lead to a more meaningful dialogue, as thoughtful nuance and rational trade-offs can signal open-mindedness and strengthen credibility as a non-dogmatic advocate. Especially since most people are more concerned with the scale of animal agriculture and its consequences than with the idea of eating animals per se, a philosophy that allows for the consumption of a few carefully considered animal products may resonate with a broader audience and thereby inspire more people to take meaningful steps toward minimising animal suffering, even if they don't entirely adopt a conventional vegan lifestyle. At the same time, such nuance may undermine credibility in the eyes of those who view deviations from conventional veganism as morally inconsistent, and constantly adjusting the message to the audience can strain authenticity and lead to decision fatigue.

Diversity vs. Unity

Deviating from conventional veganism may risk weakening the movement's ability to build coherent narratives and foster a strong collective identity. A clear and consistent message like "don't eat animals" can be a powerful tool for social change. When repeated by many people over time, it helps shape public perception and gives supporters a sense of belonging. Movements often rely on these dynamics to establish momentum, especially when they are still small. At the same time, it is unlikely for a one-size-fits-all message to work for everyone, as different messages resonate with different people. For someone who does not view eating animals as inherently wrong or is not convinced by conventional veganism for other reasons, the idea that eating sardines and anchovies may cause less harm than many plant-based foods could draw them in rather than push them away. Therefore, using a diversity of approaches tailored to different audiences may help reach more people and ultimately advance the movement's goals more effectively.

👉 Conclusion

Reconsidering the ethics of eating sardines and anchovies through a pragmatic lens suggests that avoiding all animal products may not always be the most effective way to minimise harm. Rather than focusing only on the first-order consequences of our food choices and striving for purity at that level, it may better align with the core values of veganism to consider the full range of downstream consequences and make choices that produce the greatest net benefit for sentient beings. Sardines and anchovies provide exceptional nutritional value and, under the right conditions, may carry a lower environmental and moral cost than many plant-based foods. Including these small, short-lived fish in an otherwise plant-based diet can help meet nutritional needs more reliably, ease the ecological burden of food production, and minimise harm to animals with higher sentience. When approached thoughtfully and communicated with care, this pragmatic approach could broaden the appeal of ethical eating and support the long-term goals of the animal advocacy movement. Therefore, eating sardines and anchovies may not only be ethically justifiable but even potentially preferable as a transitional strategy toward a more sustainable and more compassionate food system.[30]

Edit (10 July 2025): Updated the description of the purse seine fishing process to reflect more realistic estimates of its duration, based on feedback by Sagar K Shah. This doesn't change the broader conclusions, but the earlier version gave a misleading impression and has been corrected accordingly. The revised estimate introduces more uncertainty about whether purse seine fishing causes less overall harm than natural death, and this remains an open question.

Edit (15 July 2025): Removed the claim that sardines and anchovies accumulate only minimal levels of PCBs, based on feedback by Nunik. Given the lack of robust evidence, the original statement was overly optimistic. This does not affect the overall health assessment of sardines and anchovies, as health authorities generally consider their nutritional benefits to outweigh the potential risks from PCBs. Consumers can also reduce potential exposure by choosing sardines and anchovies sourced from less polluted regions.

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  30. ^

    While this essay focuses on sardines and anchovies, the arguments presented may also apply to other small pelagic fish that are short-lived, broadcast-spawning, low on the food chain, wild-caught with minimal bycatch, and behaviourally simple with limited sentience.

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Thanks for a very thought provoking post.  

I'd tend to agree that wild-caught small forage-feeding pelagic fish like anchovies/sardines might be among the animal products that humans could consume with the lowest counterfactual harm and the greatest nutritional benefit to people on otherwise largely plant-based diets.

From an animal advocacy perspective, I think its useful to have specific suggestions on what to eat for people who are resistant to going vegan or would find it very hard to eliminate all animal products, and this post has prompted me to consider small pelagic fish more seriously.

A small nitpick is that I believe the duration of stress experienced by small pelagic fish in European purse seine fisheries is likely to be in excess of the 10minutes you suggest.  I've only encountered one study relevant study here (Marcalo et al (2006)), which involved looking at stress markers in sardines in Portuguese fisheries sampled throughout the capture process.  That study suggests the capture process can take 90-120minutes from encircling through to the end of transfer fish on board, and and most stress markers seemed to increase throughout time in the net.  Although this point in itself would not change the high-level conclusions (as the key crux for me is how stress of capture compares to the counterfactual death), I do worry your claim here was overconfident and that other arguments you've made in this post might not stand up to scrutiny.

One item I'd like to explore more is whether similar arguments might also apply to slightly larger pelagic forage fish like Mackerel and Herring.  My understanding is by-catch is also relatively low for these species (though they are often captured by pelagic trawlers), but they have a much higher aggregate value and value per fish.  The possibility of developing and implementing humane capture technologies (e.g. electrical stunning) seems greater for these species than for sardines/anchovies, and fewer would need to be consumed to achieve a given level of calories/nutrition.

Thank you so much for your thoughtful feedback, Sagar, and especially for pointing out the issue with the stress duration. That's very helpful. We really aren't experts on this matter. We've tried to research this issue as thoroughly as we could and made a real effort to seek out input from marine biologists and fish welfare researchers. That said, we weren't able to find anyone with specific expertise on sardines and anchovies. As a result, there's still a lot of question marks for us, which is why we are so keen to get the feedback of people like yourself. :) 

It seems with net hauling we mistakenly based our numbers on a study citing net setting times, without realising that this did not include haulage. We looked into the study your shared as well as more recent studies and it seems the 90 to 120 minutes time from net set to loading on board is a good estimate to go for, though it seems it can sometimes even exceed this time if slippage is required or the boat is overloaded. We have updated our claims and would love to hear your thoughts on the uncertainty this may introduce in the trade off between deaths in the wild vs from fishing!

We personally think the direct suffering experienced by the sardines and anchovies may not be the most important consideration, especially as they appear to have a very low moral weight. Instead, the environmental impacts of different protein sources and their indirect effects on wild animal populations might dominate the overall animal welfare implications.

We also think it’s important to add that what we're really trying to explore with this post is not only whether sardines and anchovies might be a good option for people who are resistant to going vegan, but also whether they could be a meaningful and defensible choice for people who already consider themselves vegan. That is, of course, a more controversial angle, and one where the nutritional considerations play an especially important role.

Regarding larger pelagic forage fish like mackerel and herring, we did not consider them for several reasons:

  • They are higher in the food chain and longer-lived, which increases the risk of heavy metal and microplastic accumulation.
  • Their more complex hunting behaviours likely indicate a higher welfare range, which increases the potential for direct suffering, though this might change if stunning technologies could be implemented (thanks for raising this interesting point!).
  • Unlike sardines and anchovies, which feed on rudimentary, brainless planktonic organisms, mackerel and herring prey on more complex animals, including small fish like sardines and anchovies. Building on this post (thank you, Bella!), reducing mackerel/herring populations could increase sardine/anchovy numbers, and if those species lead net-negative lives, this could worsen overall outcomes. We don't think this consideration applies to planktonic organisms.
  • Due to their higher trophic level and longer life spans, mackerel and herring stocks may be less resilient to fishing pressures, raising concerns about scalability.
  • Pelagic trawling, which is more commonly used to catch mackerel and herring, likely results in higher GHG emissions and slightly higher bycatch than purse seining/ring netting.
  • Sardines and anchovies are heavily used as feed in salmon farming, which is less the case for herring and mackerel. So eating sardines/anchovies might simply shift them from feed to food use, potentially displacing part of the salmon industry (yay!), whereas the same effect is less likely with mackerel or herring.

That said, our thinking on mackerel and herring is based on limited exploration. We haven't looked into these species in detail, and we'd be really curious to hear your thoughts on whether any of these assumptions seem off.

FWIW, I wouldn’t consider planktonic animals necessarily brainless or unworthy of moral consideration. Peruvian anchoveta eat krill, which I imagine to be sentient with modest probability, and copepods, which I consider worth researching more.

Thanks! Appreciate your thoughtful reply, especially on mackerel/herring.

I don't think stress duration itself changes the overall conclusions of this work, especially as my best guess is that increasing human (food) demand for sardines/anchovies might not counterfactually increase catch volumes for these species (unless it increases political pressure for increased quotas).  

That said, I remain pretty uncertain about what the consequences of pushing up demand for these species might be.  On the one hand, it could push up prices for fishmeal, which in turn could raise input prices for aquaculture for carnivorous/omnivious species.  But on the other hand, it could also push up prices for sardines/anchovies, which in turn could push omnivores/pesceterians who currently eat sardines/anchovies to eat other foods.  Those second-round effects seem pretty hard to know with confidence, but seems pretty plausible those folks could switch from anchovies/sardines to farmed salmon/shrimp or land-based meats like chicken.

 

I agree with your point on catch volumes. Though I do hope I'll find a fisheries expert to evaluate this quota claim properly, as it seems so critical. 

Regarding your second point, I don't share all your concerns about the second-order consequences. Sardines and anchovies are currently used primarily as low-value inputs for fishmeal. The margins of sardines and anchovies for human consumption exceed that of fishmeal, so reallocating catch to human diets would likely not change the price.

Frozen sardines in the UK are currently priced slightly below chicken per gram of protein while also providing valuable EPA/DHA (canned sardines are a bit pricier due to packaging and processing costs).

For salmon or shrimp, their dependence on fish meal would make them more expensive were sardines/anchovies to shift to human consumption, making them less appealing substitutes.

Thanks for all your input :) Really appreciate it!

Thanks for this post!

Something it looks like you didn't consider, and I'd be interested in your views on, are the arguments raised by this post.

Basically, the view I've come to in recent years is we are almost totally in the dark about the overall sign of eating wild-caught fish.

I still stick with veganism for some of the reasons you raise in the 'moral progress' section, but I think given current tech / welfare science, it's very hard to feel confident in a conclusion either way.

Thanks for bringing that post into the conversation! We really appreciate the cautious approach it advocates and agree that there's a great deal of uncertainty when it comes to understanding the full welfare implications of wild-caught fish.

That said, we think the situation with sardines and anchovies might be somewhat different from many other species. These small pelagic fish are already being caught at or near maximum catch levels, primarily to produce feed for farmed salmon. So increasing human consumption wouldn't lead to more fishing, but rather to a diversion of existing catch from salmon feed to direct human food. This shift could reduce the scale of salmon farming, thereby lowering both the direct suffering of farmed fish and the wider ecological harms associated with aquaculture.

Because these small pelagic fish are already being caught (unlike species like tuna, which are mostly caught for direct human consumption) the food web effects of this shift may be more or less neutral. And while anchovies do eat krill, which might be sentient, this concern may be outweighed by the positive ripple effects of reducing salmon farming.

On the human side, sardines and anchovies may help some people stick to a veganish diet by improving nutrient intake and reducing reliance on supplements or costly alternative proteins, which could further reduce harm overall.

If we're talking about an increasing demand shift for sardines and anchovies from people who would otherwise abstain from eating fish, this would increase the price of fishmeal and make farmed insects look relatively more attractive as a potential feed for farmed fish, especially salmon. So, this could increase insect farming, too.

On the other hand, shifting people from eating farmed fish to eating sardines and anchovies could reduce both fish farming and insect farming (as well as crop agriculture for feed, but I'm not sure whether that's good or bad).

Thanks for sharing your thoughts, Michael! I believe the key reason wild fish ingredients in aquaculture have yet to be eliminated is due to EPA/DHA (omega 3s) which as far as I know are only derived from algae or the marine creatures which consume it. Thus, insect meal might be able to replace some of the fish meal, but certainly not the fish oil. Currently, both insect meal and, especially, algae oil seem to be expensive, so even if producers were to switch to these ingredients, salmon prices would rise, likely decreasing demand. But I agree that if insect and algae farming become more efficient this could be a concern in the future. 

Also, thanks for sharing the information on krill, I've updated my thoughts thanks to you :)

Interesting!

While the small body size of sardines and anchovies means that many individuals must be killed to produce a given amount of food, thereby scaling up the moral weight, a meaningful moral cost calculation should extend beyond these direct first-order consequences to account for indirect higher-order consequences, especially given that all food production invariably involves some level of collateral damage, as will be discussed further on.

On the other hand, sardines really are very small, and I reckon you'd need on the order of 100x as many sardines as you'd need salmons to get the same amount of calories. I wonder how many small animals would die to produce the amount of calories of plant-based food you'd get from a sardine? I'd guess <<0.1, but I'd be interested in seeing estimates here as it seems pretty cruxy.

It's true that because of the small body size, you'd need a large number of sardines or anchovies to match the calories from a larger animal like a salmon. However, it's worth noting that salmon themselves feed on fish like sardines and anchovies, both in the wild and in aquaculture, where each salmon is typically fed hundreds of small pellagic fish throughout its life.

Regarding the number of crop deaths caused by plant agriculture, it's difficult to draw firm conclusions based on the limited data currently available, as discussed in the section "Fishing vs. Crop Deaths".

That said, as explored in the section "Fishing vs. Natural Deaths", these comparisons may be less relevant if fishing sardines and anchovies is net positive, that is, if their deaths via fishing involve less suffering than they would have experienced otherwise in the wild. In addition, the long-term impacts such as biodiversity loss or climate change are very hard to quantify but could significantly shift the overall ethical calculus even further in favour of eating sardines and anchovies.

Regarding the number of crop deaths caused by plant agriculture, it's difficult to draw firm conclusions based on the limited data currently available, as discussed in the section "Fishing vs. Crop Deaths".

That section states

While reliable data on crop deaths is extremely limited[27], it is plausible that these crop deaths may carry a higher total moral cost than fishing sardines and anchovies.


I thought I'd expand on this claim a bit, as I agree with @Erich_Grunewald 🔸 it seems cruxy. 

Ultimately I agree, though if I were deriving my opinion solely on the citated paper, "Field Deaths in Plant Agriculture",[1] the initial calculation based on it makes it seem unlikely. The paper says "Our overall estimate should still be much lower than the one we mentioned at the outset [even if we are morally responsible for deaths from predation]", which is "over 7.3 billion animals killed each year". That's roughly 1 animal killed per human per year.[2] If we estimate mean calorie intake to be 2500 kcal per day, 365.25 days per year, that's 913,125 kcal per year, for 1 death. 1 sardine is 47kcal,[3] so the initial rough comparison of 913,125/47 means that sardines cause 19,428x as many deaths per calorie as crops, excluding insects. 

Importantly, the "7.3 billion animals" does not include insects, but, based on Tomasik 2016, cropland probably typically has lower Net Primary Productivity, and lower insect populations, which is probably a good thing (assuming the insects have net-negative lives). So that suggests eating crops has a positive moral impact, despite crop deaths.

However, considering this post, I come to agree with your position that it is plausible that "crop deaths may carry a higher total moral cost than fishing sardines and anchovies" (i.e. that it is plausible that fishing sardines has a positive impact which is greater than the positive impact of farming crops). 

  1. ^

    Fischer, B., & Lamey, A. (2018). Field Deaths in Plant Agriculture. Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 31, 409–428. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10806-018-9733-8

  2. ^

    Human population surpassed 7.3 billion in 2014: https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/world-population-by-year/ 

  3. ^

Well reasoned post!

I wonder how this compares to eating mussels and oysters

On the one hand I think oysters are much less likely to be conscious. 

On the other hand, they are also farmed, which tends to lead to worse well-being than if they're in their natural habitat.

When I look at the farming practices for oysters and mussels they look to be pretty similar to their natural habitat but I have not investigated super thoroughly.

Thanks for your kind words and for raising this. It's a really interesting comparison and I actually touched on mussels and oysters briefly in the response to someone else's question: I think many of the arguments here also apply to them, and I see no ethical concerns with their consumption. However, there are some health-related reasons to be cautious about eating them too frequently. As filter feeders, they can accumulate heavy metals and microplastics, especially if sourced from polluted waters. Nutritionally, sardines and anchovies offer even greater benefits, particularly higher levels of EPA/DHA and calcium, which makes them a better overall choice in that regard. They also tend to be significantly more affordable.

Wild sardine and anchovy fishing also results in very low bycatch.[23] As pelagic fish that swim in dense shoals near the surface, they are caught with purse seine nets rather than bottom trawls, avoiding seabed damage and minimising the risk of plastic pollution through ghost gear.

I would say this is the crux of the issue for me and I appreciate your addressing it directly. Looking at the cited research:

This paper presents a study of the Spanish purse-seine fleet operating in the Bay of Biscay during the years 2016–2019. It considers the species selectivity and the effect of fishing activities on the pelagic community by assessing the interactions with the endangered, threatened and protected (ETP) species and estimating the discard sizes. For the purpose of this study, the metiers were defined by grouping similar catch profiles, using hierarchical agglomerative cluster analysis. This definition of metier goes beyond the Data Collection Framework (DCF) concepts; it includes specific target species, thus increasing the accuracy. Sampling conducted at sea during the four years of the study demonstrated that; 1) the discards were scarce both in terms of overall values and the proportion of the catch (below 1% for almost all metiers and years); 2) The studied purse-seine fishery is one of the most selective among those harvesting the pelagic domain in the Bay of Biscay; 3) The results also showed that the fleet avoided the unwanted catches, mostly by practising slipping;4) The interaction with the ETPs was almost non-existent. Only a single case of a yellow-legged gull entanglement was recorded, and the bird was released alive. Notably, more than 7500 individuals of 16 species of seabirds and marine mammals were recorded in the vicinity of the fishing grounds. Thus, we conclude that this purse-seine fishery has only a slight impact on the main species of the pelagic ecosystem, due to the purse-seine slipping practices.

I don't know this branch of work well. Do you consider these estimates credible? Generalizable? if I buy anchovies at the grocery store where i live in Brooklyn, will they be caught the way these were, or worse?

My general thought on this is that because I'm not expert in these issues I should err on the side of abstaining. But I am persuadable. 

(My other big question for this line of thinking is, why anchovies/sardines when oysters/mussels are widely available, provide many of the same nutritional benefits, and are more clearly nonconscious.)

It makes sense to ask whether the points about low bycatch, minimal seabed damage, and reduced plastic pollution from purse seine fishing apply more broadly than just the specific fishery mentioned in the cited study. As far as I can tell, they do. Because of the shoaling behaviour of sardines and anchovies, purse seining is ideal and by far the most cost-effective way to catch them at scale. That's why the vast majority of the global sardine and anchovy supply appears to be caught this way. There may be rare exceptions, such as small-scale artisanal fisheries using line and hook fishing, which likely has an even lower negative impact, or rare instances of trawling, which may occur when the fish are unusually deep and in regions with weaker regulatory oversight, but these seem to account for only a tiny fraction of the global catch. That said, I'm not an expert on global fisheries and would be very happy to hear from someone who is.

Regarding mussels and oysters: I think many of the arguments here also apply to them, and I see no ethical concerns with their consumption. However, there are some health-related reasons to be cautious about eating them too frequently. As filter feeders, they can accumulate heavy metals and microplastics, especially if sourced from polluted waters. Nutritionally, sardines and anchovies offer even greater benefits, particularly higher levels of EPA/DHA and calcium, which makes them a better overall choice in that regard. They also tend to be significantly more affordable.

Thanks for the post, Chris and Elizabeth! I agree replacing plant-based foods with wild fish tends to increase animal welfare. I expect this would increase the consumption of farmed fish because the catch of wild fish is roughly constant, and farmed fish requires 1.13 (= 8.41/7.46) and 2.39 (= 8.41/3.52) times as much agricultural land per food-kg as tofu and peas. So I think the replacement would tend to increase agricultural land. I estimate this increases the welfare of soil nematodes, mites, and springtails much more than it impacts the welfare of the directly affected fish. So I believe the replacement would be beneficial.

Thanks for engaging with the post! You're right that the total wild fish catch has been relatively stable for decades. However, I think there may be a misunderstanding: sardines and anchovies aren't farmed as a matter of principle. As outlined in the post, their biological characteristics make farming them economically unviable. So if demand for sardines and anchovies increases for human consumption, the most likely outcome is a reallocation, with more sardines and anchovies being directed to human food rather than animal feed.

Also, just to clarify: while I appreciate the point about invertebrate welfare, a core motivation behind the post is to minimise land use, given its outsized role in driving biodiversity loss and climate change. From that perspective, increasing land use, even if it may benefit some invertebrate populations, is not a positive outcome in my view. Would love to hear your thoughts on that trade-off!

You are welcome!

Sorry for the lack of clarity. I had understood that sardines and anchovies are not farmed. However, you say they have "annually adjusted and effectively enforced catch quotas", so I am guessing that some people buying more of them instead of plant-based foods will mostly result in some other people having to buy less of them, and more of other fish. I think this other fish would be farmed because the catch of wild fish is broadly limited by quotas. So I expect that buying wild sardines and anchovies instead of plant-based foods has the net effect of increasing farmed fish.

I estimate replacing tropical and subtropical forests with cropland increases the welfare of soil nematodes, mites, and springtails by 18.2 QALY/m2-year, which is as good as averting 18.2 human-years of hurtful pain per m2-year for my guess that hurtful pain is as intense as fully happy life. I think that increase in welfare is much larger than the potential harm from additional greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and loss of biodiversity.

Relatedly, I believe replacing chicken meat with beef or pork increases the welfare of farmed animals much more than it decreases the welfare of humans due to increasing GHG emissions.

Do you feel like the above negative effects [on humans of GHG emissions], a few minutes of healthy life lost in total spread across billions of humans over roughly a century, which is not more than a few billionths of one second per person-year, justify one sentient individual experiencing tens of hours more of annoying pain, tens of hours more of hurtful pain, a few hours more of disabling pain, and a few seconds more of excruciating pain? I do not.

Thanks for the clarification!

As mentioned in the "Fish Populations" section, sardines and anchovies are mostly used for aquaculture feed and pet food. Since total catch is capped, increased demand for human consumption would raise prices and thereby likely incentivise feed producers to switch to alternative proteins, rather than leading to more farmed fish overall.

I appreciate the focus on comparing direct animal suffering, although I'm somewhat uncertain about the extent to which soil nematodes, mites, and springtails should be considered sentient, but I haven't looked into this in depth so far. However, I wonder whether this analysis fully accounts for the long-term and potentially irreversible consequences of increased GHG emissions, particularly the risk of triggering climate tipping points, large-scale biodiversity loss, and the associated risk of human extinction. Ecosystem collapse and permanent species loss represent a qualitatively different kind of harm than direct animal suffering, and may be ethically more significant in the long run. Though of course, there is a lot of uncertainty around all of this.

Thanks for clarifying too! I agree the increased cost of wild sardines and anchovies would tend to increase the production of alternative feed for the fish being fed wild sardines and anchovies. However, more than 1 kg of alternative feed would be needed to produce 1 kg of farmed fish. So humans eating 1 kg more of wild sardines and achovies would result in more than 1 kg more of alternative feed. As a result, eating wild sardines and anchovies instead of plant-based foods would still increase agricultural land if 1 kg of alternative feed requires as much agricultural land as 1 kg of the replaced plant-based foods.

Thanks Vasco, I really appreciate your thoughtful engagement!

I agree that feed conversion losses mean more than 1 kg of alternative feed would be needed to produce 1 kg of farmed fish. So if that alternative feed uses as much land as the replaced plant-based food, land use could indeed increase. However, many promising feed alternatives (based on microbial fermentation, insects, or algae) may have a much smaller land footprint than typical crops grown for human consumption. So the net effect on land use depends on what those alternatives are. That said, many current feed alternatives might be less efficient.

I think it's important to also consider not just the calories or kilograms involved, but the nutritional value. Sardines and anchovies are exceptionally nutrient-dense, as discussed in the "Health and Nutrition" section. So even if land use were slightly higher per kilogram, the nutritional return per land area might still be better. It's definitely a complex question, and I'd love to see more data on this.

Makes sense. Thanks for all your engagement too, Chris!

For several years, I've been vegan basically other than bivalves, but I started taking actual fish oil supplements (anchovy-based) a few months ago.[1] I started taking actual fish oil, because:

  1. I was more confident in the benefits of >50% EPA omega-3 supplements than I was in >50% DHA omega-3 supplements[2][3],
  2. I couldn't find cheap enough vegan supplements for which the omega-3 was >50% EPA (I used these for some time, but they are pretty expensive, because I was taking multiple per day) or cheap and practical bivalve sources that were consistently >50% EPA from omega-3 and had low omega-6,
  3. I was concerned that EPA and DHA might compete, so that just taking more of an omega-3 supplement that's >50% DHA might not help as much, although I'm very unsure about this, and
  4. the effects on animals aren't clearly worse (rather than better) than not eating them or eating alternatives (see my sequence, and this thread on this post.)

I just got Perplexity to do some related "Deep Research" here. Its answer to the first prompt suggests competition isn't much of a concern, while its answer to the second suggests that >50% EPA omega-3 supplements tend to be better for brain function than >50% DHA omega-3 supplements, but it depends on the brain functions you're most interested in; higher DHA is recommended for memory and cognitive aging. Also, the usual warning about LLMs hallucinating or otherwise not being accurate.

  1. ^

    I take 4 of these per day, for 1600 mg of EPA and 800mg of DHA per day.

  2. ^

    Firth et al., 2019, figure 2 suggests >50% EPA supplements are effective in treating depression, and there's not enough evidence to suggest >50% DHA supplements are effective in treating depression, despite multiple studies with many participants in total. However, I didn't check doses.

  3. ^

    From the Wikipedia page on EPA:

    Although studies of fish oil supplements, which contain both docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) and EPA, have failed to support claims of preventing heart attacks or strokes,[2][3][4] a recent multi-year study of Vascepa (ethyl eicosapentaenoate, the ethyl ester of the free fatty acid), a prescription drug containing only EPA, was shown to reduce heart attack, stroke, and cardiovascular death by 25% relative to a placebo in those with statin-resistant hypertriglyceridemia.[5][6]

Although direct evidence comparing the subjective distress caused by fishing and natural deaths is limited, the specific characteristics of purse seining suggest that this particular method of fishing may lead to less overall suffering.

This seems like the crux issue to me from an animal welfare PoV, which seems like the highest-order concern. Perhaps you could expand on this? Some relevant links would help here. How much time is spent for each type of death? What are the basis for the estimated suffering levels, etc.

I agree this is a central question from an animal welfare perspective, and also a very tricky one.

As far as I know, there's no direct research comparing the subjective experience of death by fishing versus natural causes like predation, starvation, and disease in sardines or anchovies. So we're left making our best-educated guess, based on what we know about the mechanisms and likely duration of each kind of death. Being chased, caught and then dissolved in a predator's stomach, or slowly dying from starvation or disease, is almost certainly prolonged and stressful. Purse seine fishing, by contrast, seems to involve a much shorter timeframe. While it's obviously still bad, my current best guess is that it may involve less total suffering than most natural deaths in the wild.

That said, I'd love to see more research on this and am very open to revising that view.

Another relevant point from an animal welfare perspective is that choosing sardines and anchovies over foods that have a bigger environmental footprint helps preserve biodiversity and ecosystem resilience, which are crucial for the long-term flourishing of both wild animals and humanity.

After receiving feedback on the duration of the purse seine process, we've revised some of our earlier assumptions and updated the post accordingly. In light of that, we now think it's more accurate to say that we simply don't know whether death by purse seine fishing involves more or less suffering than typical natural deaths. The mechanisms differ, but without direct evidence comparing subjective experiences, it's hard to draw strong conclusions either way.

Given that, I'd suggest that the indirect effects of food choices, particularly those related to land use, biodiversity loss, and climate change, may be more decisive from an animal welfare perspective. These broader impacts affect not only current individuals but also the long-term well-being and survival of many wild animals and ecosystems. So even if we can't confidently compare direct suffering in one death scenario vs. another, reducing demand for foods that minimise land use change, such as sardines and anchovies, seems to be the preferable choice overall.

Clearly, though, there's a need for more research.

Executive summary: This exploratory post argues that, under a pragmatic and consequentialist interpretation of vegan ethics, including sardines and anchovies in an otherwise plant-based diet may reduce overall harm and better support health, environmental sustainability, and animal welfare than strict adherence to conventional vegan purity.

Key points:

  1. Nutritional rationale: Sardines and anchovies offer highly bioavailable nutrients (e.g., EPA/DHA, B12, iron) often missing or hard to absorb from plant-based diets, and may enhance long-term health outcomes more reliably than supplementation alone.
  2. Environmental impact: These small, wild-caught fish require no land, feed, or freshwater inputs and have significantly lower greenhouse gas emissions and ecological disruption compared to other animal or plant-based proteins.
  3. Animal ethics: Although many individuals must be killed per calorie, sardines and anchovies likely have lower moral weight than many animals harmed in crop production, and their deaths via purse seining may be less painful than natural deaths from predation or starvation.
  4. Societal implications: A pragmatic approach that includes low-sentience animal products could promote broader moral concern, reduce dropouts from veganism, and align more closely with effective altruist principles aimed at net harm reduction.
  5. Movement strategy trade-offs: While such a view may weaken message clarity or group cohesion, it could also attract a wider audience to animal advocacy by offering a flexible and less dogmatic ethical framework.
  6. Transitional ethics: Sardines and anchovies may serve as an ethically preferable interim option until plant-based or cellular agriculture fully mitigates harm from food production, making them a potential bridge toward a more sustainable food system.

 

 

This comment was auto-generated by the EA Forum Team. Feel free to point out issues with this summary by replying to the comment, and contact us if you have feedback.

Herring might also be similar to anchovies and sardines in this respect. These small fish are also potentially resilient food sources in catastrophes.

Thanks for the suggestion! We think herring might differ from sardines and anchovies in several relevant ways. For more detail on our thinking, take a look at Elizabeth Crewe's reply to the comment by Sagar K Shah.

Biodiversity plays a key role in maintaining ecosystem resilience by providing redundancy and adaptability. As it declines, ecosystems become more fragile, raising not only the risk of widespread species loss but also the risk of human extinction, given our dependence on functioning ecosystems.

 

Is it true that humans depend on functioning ecosystems, in the sense avoiding extinction -- or even in the sense of >5% of human lives relying on them? 

A lot of the examples[1] I've seen are doubtful, e.g. pollination is sometimes given as an example of an ecosystem service, but staple crops like wheat are wind-pollinated, and domesticated bees are used for the crops that require insect pollination. 

Edit: More on the pollination example: 
Yields would decline 5-10% without pollinators,[2] and "Non-bees performed 25–50% of the total number of flower visits [...] pollination services rendered by non-bees [are] similar to those provided by bees."[3] So if you were to naively combine these, it might mean that yields would decline 2.5-5% if wild pollinators disappeared.

  1. ^
  2. ^
  3. ^

    Rader, R., et al. (2016). "Non-bee insects are important contributors to global crop pollination." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 113(1), 146-151. https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1517092112 

As short-lived fish low on the food chain, they accumulate only minimal levels of contaminants like mercury and PCB

Sardines and anchovies seem to be high in PCBs. Did you come across any research that stated otherwise?

Thank you for sharing this, Nunik! 
It seems the post you link is right to caution that lumping the low mercury and PCB claim together for small pelagics as is often done (even in our own post - prior to the update we just made!) is misguided. 
I tried to do further research and it seems to me the following is true (I'm new to the topic, so please say if you know otherwise):

  1. PCB concentrations are extremely geographically and temporally variable. Areas like the Baltic sea or SF Bay are very high in PCBs, but levels in the open oceans are much lower. Also, PCBs have been banned from the 80's and levels in fish have been declining as more of the PCBs sediment to ocean floors, so it is becoming less of a concern.
  2. PCBs are hydrophobic, thus they do accumulate in fishes, particularly their fat. As sardines/anchovies are fatty, they contain higher PCBs than less fatty fishes like Cod.
  3. PCBs like most contaminants biomagnify. Predators consuming sardines will absorb the PCBs in their fat, increasing their PCB levels. Thus, sardines/anchovies may be less contaminated than equally fatty but longer-lived/higher trophic level fishes.

It really does seem PCB levels can be a health concern, something I was not as aware of before. However, health authorities still lean heavily towards promoting the consumption of oily fishes, often even singling out sardines/anchovies as top choices. I suppose the trade-off of higher PCBs but higher EPA/DHA + other nutrients is still a positive one, but I would love to explore this deeper! Let me know if you have any insights on this topic :)

Thank you for raising this thought-provoking and important discussion! At Aquatic Life Institute (ALI), we appreciate efforts to explore nuanced dietary shifts that could reduce total animal suffering, especially given the inefficiencies and welfare harms associated with farming high-trophic carnivorous species like salmon and tuna. We’ve long advocated for transitions away from such systems and support interventions that reduce reliance on farmed aquatic animals.

That said, we believe it’s critical that proposals to shift toward small pelagics like sardines and anchovies also fully account for their welfare. While often perceived as “lower-sentience” species, emerging scientific consensus supports the conclusion that these animals are sentient and capable of experiencing pain and distress. Standard wild-capture methods, particularly purse seining, typically result in prolonged deaths by asphyxiation, crushing, or decompression, with no stunning or humane slaughter protocols in place. The scale of suffering in these fisheries is enormous and remains largely invisible.

We understand that from a utilitarian or cost-effectiveness perspective, some may view small fish as a “less-worse” option due to their lower trophic level or potentially reduced capacity for suffering. However, the uncertainty around comparative sentience, and the difficulty of aggregating suffering across large numbers of individuals, warrants caution. Even if individual suffering is lower, the sheer number of animals affected may result in greater total harm. We believe this is a strong case for applying a precautionary principle and for avoiding framings that risk reinforcing speciesism or justifying harm to animals deemed “less sentient.”

On the question of tractable alternatives: there are promising interventions that deserve more attention and resources. These include accelerating the development and availability of high-quality plant-based seafood, supporting policy and institutional shifts that reduce overall seafood demand, improving welfare standards within both aquaculture and fisheries, and ensuring that small pelagic, where harvested, are redirected from feed use toward nourishing human populations in low-income, coastal regions where nutritional needs are high. Crucially, all of these must be paired with efforts to reduce the scale of suffering, particularly in wild-capture settings, by investing in the development and enforcement of more humane capture and slaughter techniques.

In short, we see this conversation not as a binary choice, but as an opportunity to elevate aquatic animal welfare within broader food system reform.

Standard wild-capture methods, particularly purse seining, typically result in prolonged deaths by asphyxiation, crushing, or decompression, with no stunning or humane slaughter protocols in place. The scale of suffering in these fisheries is enormous and remains largely invisible.

Because of fishery policies that could make supply very inelastic, like quotas or appropriately responsive closures or limits on fleet capacity, it's not clear that vegans adding sardines and anchovies to their diets actually increases the number of such deaths. Furthermore, if there's overfishing, the effect of increasing demand may be to reduce the number of such deaths. See my posts Sustainable fishing policy increases fishing, and demand reductions might, too and The responsiveness of aquatic animal supply.

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