Tinned Fish Frenzy
The luxury of harm
Over the winter holidays, I went to a White Elephant gift exchange. These exchanges are essentially a game wherein guests bring surprise gifts to add to a common pool. They are then given random numbers and, once it is their turn, they can either open a new present or steal one that has already been opened. In this particular exchange, the hottest item was a can of tinned fish, from what I recall, some kind of whitefish fomenting in oil. When one of the partygoers pulled away the tissue paper, several others released squeals of excitement, “Oh my gosh! Is that tinned fish?!”
The gift was attractively packaged, and the tin was certainly pleasing to look at––With pastel illustrations of a placid fish, it was clearly the result of some serious graphic design. Even so, the group’s collective jubilation surprised me. It was, after all, a tin of dead fish.
The recipient of the fish was clearly pleased, and while other participants joked about taking it, it remained in their possession for the duration of the game. After the game, people passed it around, inspecting it approvingly.
I am not an especially trendy person. For example, I don’t predict that, out of the 13 trends spelled out by the NY Times this year, I will take part in many of them. I still guzzle coffee and wear shoelaces (untrendy), but I have increased the frequency with which I talk to strangers and have always detested the word “vibes” (trendy).
Despite my spotty track record, I do have trendy friends, and it was they who made up this particular crowd of partygoers. If they are swooning over tinned fish, then I had reason to believe that they weren’t the only ones. Indeed, they were not. And, after the appropriate latency of one who rebuffs what is in style, when I finally researched the prevalence of the tinned fish craze, I discovered that people have been talking about it for months. Tinned fish videos have accrued millions of views on TikTok and entire blogs exist that are singularly devoted to ‘popping tins.’
Even late to the scene, I believe I have something relevant to add that is missing from the tinned fish furor––disapproval. Rather than reveling in the vintage charm of the cans or in ideating gourmet recipes, I want to talk about the dark and slippery underbelly of the world of tinned fish, a world of waste, apathy, and wanton cruelty to animals.
Where Vogue speculates that this tinned fish “mania reflects a broader, and more timeless, hunger for simple, inexpensive, shelf-stable foods,” I suggest instead that it reflects our broader, and more timeless capacity to inflict harm upon other beings for the sake of gustatory pleasure and going along with the herd. Stylishly designed, hyper-promoted, and even sexualized, tinned fish has taken on a life outside of aluminum and brine. And with all this hype and design, it is tempting to forget what it really is.
In fact, what it is is highly varied, and this is part of the problem.
The most popular brands of tinned fish offer numerous varieties of seafood from mussels to octopus. Mussels, clams, and oysters, all popular tinned fish, are members of a group of aquatic invertebrates called bivalves. Even amongst animal welfare advocates, there is no consensus on whether or not these sessile mollusks experience pain. They are undoubtedly alive but seem less animal and more similar to filtering plants. The question of whether or not it is morally permissible to eat them is therefore unclear.
On the other hand, an abundance of recent research has shown that octopuses are highly likely to be sentient, and as a result to experience states of pleasure and pain. This status drives the animal welfare movement and is the reason why animal protection laws exist. When it comes to octopuses, studies show that their central brains contain complex neural networks which make them capable of sensitization, habituation, associative learning, including visual and tactile discriminative capabilities, and spatial learning. In other words, these creatures can sense their environments, form memories, and complete a variety of complex tasks like taking the lids of jars. Despite these impressive capabilities, octopuses have fallen victim to the tinned fish frenzy.
The Tiny Fish Co., one of the many en vogue tinned fish purveyors of recent years, claims on their website that their octopus is “a by-catch of environmentally friendly pot caught cod fisheries in Dutch Harbor, AK.” But this is misleading. They make it sound like by-catch is an anti-waste solution or akin to “using by-product.” This is a flattering way of circling around the fact that commercial fisheries capture substantial amounts of non-target catch. However, this incidental catch is not inevitable, but the side effect of rapacious and imprecise fishing techniques.
It is also worth noting that by-catch isn’t necessarily destined for slaughter. In a 2016 study on the “characteristics and discard mortality of octopus bycatch in Alaska groundfish fisheries,” the authors argue that there is a good chance that many of the octopuses who end up caught in groundfish fisheries would have a substantial chance of survival once released back. They observed that “the absence of observable decline in condition during the first 24-48 hours after capture suggests that overall delayed mortality for octopus from this fishing gear is low.” Rather than contributing to some environmentally friendly, waste-reducing effort by selling by-catch, the Tiny Fish Co. is creating demand for this incidental catch to be slaughtered and processed rather than released back into the ocean.
Additionally, research into humane slaughter methods for cephalopods suggests that the only approved method of humane slaughter is through a terminal overdose of anesthetic, which is not a method that can be used in animals destined for human consumption. It follows that the slaughter methods Tiny Fish Co.’s suppliers use are inhumane.
The way that the Tiny Fish Co. mischaracterizes and obfuscates the true nature of their product is part of a pernicious cycle of greenwashing, wherein companies make completely fictitious claims about their environmental impacts. The truth is that the animal food industry is not environmentally friendly. It contributes to a disproportionate amount of waste and environmental devastation, on top of producing inordinate amounts of animal (and human) suffering.
All in all, a more accurate portrayal of what is involved in taking a gourmet dinner of tinned octopus home with you is as follows:
You are eating incidental catch from imprecise fishing methods wherein, rather than being returned to the sea, by-catch is slaughtered and sold to you at inflated prices.
This catch, namely octopuses, are widely established by science to be sentient creatures capable of positive and negative experiences.
Because humane death by a terminal overdose of anesthetic is precluded by health and safety standards, this sentient creature is likely to have, after being exposed to rough handling by a crew, dehydration, and asphyxiation, die an agonizing death.
Assuming the above points are a deterrent to the canned-fish industry growth would be misguided. According to a forecast from IndustryARC, it is growing steadily and is estimated to reach $11.3 billion by 2027. While the majority of this rise comes from the sale of the unglamorous variety of canned tuna, the trend of bougie and designerly tinned fish does nothing to help. This demand comes primarily from the United States, where the tinned fish craze is burgeoning, especially among young women who have proclaimed it to be a “hot girl food” ––a designation of foods that supposedly romanticize simplicity.
However, there is nothing hot or romantic about the seafood industry, nor is it environmentally friendly. Our fellow creatures should not be subject to the ebbs and flows of cultural hysteria and graphic design trends. The juxtaposition between the jaunty cartoon octopuses on these cans of tinned fish and their embodied counterparts gasping for air on the decks of industrial trawlers could not be starker.
While the absolute best thing one could do to combat this fad is not to participate in it, one could mitigate some of the wrongs of this trend from a welfare perspective by only eating bivalves rather than sentient creatures like octopuses.
Ultimately, there is nothing glamorous about luxuries that try to separate themselves from the harms that their production requires. There is also nothing glamorous about companies that mislead their consumers.
There is nothing glamorous about tinned fish.