Feeding the World Without Fish and Meat

Former Princeton postdoc Talia Young merits credit and gratitude for Fishadelphia, her win-win creative nonprofit bridging COVID-compromised fishing businesses with underserved and lower-income communities in Philadelphia seeking affordable food options (“Catch of the Day,” January issue). If, however, we learn any lesson from the current global woe betide from Wuhan (the consequence perhaps of bushmeat markets), it is that killing for any purpose is fundamentally bad policy.

The world can feed itself without any need whatsoever for the killing fields of euphemistic “fishing,” or feedlots, including poultry pens. The proposition seems extremist, but is truthfully entirely moderate. I randomly began eating meatless well over two years ago, and my health as a function of this diet is likely the best it has ever been.

Provisions will have to be made, of course, for easing the many in those industries into other jobs (requiring multiple generations, perhaps). Avoiding any subsequent social disruption as a consequence will require planning. But the end result of such a policy will be a win-win, just like Ms. Young’s current enterprise. This win-win applies to provider and consumer, as much as to the consumer and the formerly consumed. And anyone who tells you otherwise is full of baloney, perhaps literally as much as figuratively.