At War: Pakistan Loses Another Journalist

Arshad Arbab/European Pressphoto AgencyNasrullah Afridi, a local journalist in Peshawar, Pakistan, was killed by a bomb planted in his vehicle.

“You better come to your senses.” This was the last threat received by the Pakistani journalist Nasrullah Afridi days before he was killed in a car bomb blast in Peshawar on May 10, his friend and colleague Sher Khan said in a telephone interview.

Pakistan has been listed as one of the deadliest countries for journalists by independent journalists’ associations, and there have been a number of uninvestigated deaths of journalists. However, the harshest and most frequent attacks have taken place in the northwestern region of the country, which includes Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Province. Since the kidnapping and slaying of the Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in 2002, at least 15 other journalists have died in targeted killings in Pakistan, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.

Mr. Afridi, 35, had been receiving threats since 2007; those threats eventually forced him to leave his home town, Bara, in Khyber Agency, a tribal area in northwest Pakistan. His house was even bombed with low-intensity explosives.

Mr. Afridi, like a number of other journalists from the Federally Administered Tribal Area of Pakistan, had to move his base to Peshawar, the provincial capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. There, he worked for Mashriq, an Urdu-language daily, and was a correspondent for the state-owned Pakistan Television. He was also president of the Bara Press Club.

“We thought it was safer for us to work from Peshawar,” said Mr. Khan, who was with Mr. Afridi the day before the bombing. That day, he said, Mr. Afridi had been buying wheelchairs for a school for special-needs children with money he had raised. The cause was close to Mr. Afridi’s heart, because three of his six children had disabilities.

Mr. Afridi was widely known to have been a been a target of Lashkar-e-Islam, a banned militant group headed by Mangal Bagh that is known to have ties with Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan. Lashkar-e-Islam is one of several militant groups fighting for control of the Khyber Agency. The Pakistani military has had limited success in tamping down the fighting among these groups, and Mr. Mangal Bagh has not been captured.

Most of the journalists from the Khyber Agency live in the same building where they work. Mr. Afridi did not.

Mr. Khan said he heard a loud explosion four minutes after Mr. Afridi had called him to let him know that he was leaving early for home because he was tired. Mr. Khan and other journalists ran outside, thinking there had been a blast in the building, but saw Mr. Afridi’s car in flames. When the flames died down, they saw a charred body in the driver’s seat, unrecognizable even by those who had known him for years.

“One could not even tell if that body was of a human being,” Mr. Khan said, his voice breaking during the interview. Mr. Afridi’s associates and relatives decided not to show his body to the family. Mr. Afridi’s father, who caught a glimpse of it during the burial, has still not recovered from the shock. Mr. Afridi’s eldest son is 18, and there is no family member who can support his family now.

Mr. Afridi’s death, like other targeted killings in the region, has created a climate of fear among reporters and residents. “We are scared of our own shadow,” Mr. Khan said.

Rabia Mehmood is the I.W.M.F. Elizabeth Neuffer Fellow at the Center for International Studies at M.I.T., and is a correspondent for Express 24/7 in Lahore, Pakistan. Follow her on Twitter @Rabail26.

 

Japan Asks Another Nuclear Plant to Shut Down Its Reactors

The plant is 120 miles southwest of Tokyo, about 40 miles closer than the Fukushima Daiichi plant, which has been spewing radioactive material since a magnitude-9.0 quake and a tsunami devastated the country’s northeast coast on March 11.

Safety activists say the problems at the plant include inadequate protections against tsunamis; its operator has said it relies on sand dunes to block waves.

Mr. Kan’s decision to suspend operations at the Hamaoka plant was made relatively quickly by the standards in Japan, where leaders generally prefer to build a consensus before announcing such policy changes.

But Mr. Kan has faced withering criticism for his handling of the Fukushima disaster, including accusations that a slow government response in the early hours of the crisis made it worse.

In explaining his decision on Friday, he said it was “the result of considering the tremendous repercussions a major accident at Hamaoka would have on the entire Japanese society.”

The government’s own experts have estimated that there is a close to a 90 percent chance of an earthquake of about magnitude 8.0 hitting the area within the next 30 years. Much less severe earthquakes have damaged at least one nuclear plant in Japan in recent years.

In 2009, Hamaoka’s operator, the Chubu Electric Power Company, decommissioned the site’s two oldest reactors after deciding that upgrading them to withstand earthquake risks would be too costly. Those reactors were built in the 1970s, around the same time as those at the Fukushima Daiichi plant.

The power company argued that the remaining three reactors, built in the 1980s, were safe enough to withstand a major earthquake. But the crisis at the Fukushima plant has heightened concerns over the risks posed by quakes and tsunamis to the nearly 50 nuclear reactors in operation in Japan.

Mr. Kan said that Chubu Electric would be asked to strengthen its defenses before a restart could be authorized. The company said that constructing an adequate sea wall would take about two years.

“More than anything, I have the safety and security of the Japanese people in mind,” Mr. Kan said.

To brace for any shortfall in electricity, he called for Japanese citizens to do even more to conserve energy.

Offices and factories in eastern Japan have already dimmed lights and altered operating hours after the government requested that they reduce their energy use by 15 percent this summer. The three operating reactors at Hamaoka have a combined capacity of about 3,500 megawatts, or about 7 percent of Japan’s nuclear power generating capacity.

“I am certain that with an even stronger energy-saving effort by both local residents and the entire Japanese nation, we will overcome the power shortage,” he said.

One of the three remaining reactors at Hamaoka had already been shut down for scheduled inspections. The company released a statement late Friday saying it would “promptly consider” Mr. Kan’s request.

Environmental groups, including Greenpeace, quickly lauded Mr. Kan’s decision and urged the Japanese government to consider halting operations at all of the reactors in Japan, which is prone to earthquakes.

“Greenpeace welcomes Prime Minister Kan’s request to close Hamaoka, one of the most dangerous nuclear reactors in Japan,” said Junichi Sato, the organization’s executive director in Japan.

“The government must continue to close and decommission existing plants and cancel all new reactors,” he said. “Only then can the Japanese people feel their government is truly putting their safety first.”

But Katsuhiko Ishibashi, a seismologist at Kobe University who has long argued for more stringent seismic standards for Japan’s nuclear power plants, said that simply halting operations at the Hamaoka plant was not enough. The reactors would remain vulnerable to quakes and tsunamis while they cooled down, he said, as would the spent fuel rods stored at the plant. “Work must be carried out immediately to make sure the plant is protected,” he said.

He also said that the government had moved too slowly in recognizing the risks posed by earthquakes to the country’s nuclear reactors. In 2006, Mr. Ishibashi urged a government committee on which he served to adopt more stringent earthquake guidelines for nuclear power operators. He later resigned when his calls were ignored.

“If Japan had faced up to the dangers earlier, we could have prevented Fukushima,” he said.

At the Fukushima plant, workers have been struggling to bring the plant’s damaged reactors and fuel rod pools under control since the March 11 tsunami knocked out all power to the plant and shut down crucial cooling systems. Three of the reactors subsequently overheated and suffered hydrogen explosions. The plant is operated by the Tokyo Electric Power Company, known here as Tepco.

Tepco has said it will take at least six to nine months to bring all of the plant’s reactors to a stable state known as a cold shutdown.

Another nuclear plant operated by Tepco, the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power station on the coast of the Sea of Japan, was damaged in a magnitude-6.6 earthquake in 2007. Fire broke out at one of the reactors, though it was quickly put out, and Tepco officials said there had not been a widespread release of radioactive material.

The plant was shut down for almost two years for repairs and inspections. Since then, four of its seven reactors have been restarted.

View the original article here

Pakistani Army Chief Warns U.S. on Another Raid

In his first public reaction to the American raid early Monday that left many Pakistanis questioning the capacities of the nation’s army, General Kayani did not appear in person, choosing instead to convey his angry message through a statement by his press office and in a closed meeting with Pakistani reporters.

The statement by the army’s press office said, “Any similar action violating the sovereignty of Pakistan will warrant a review on the level of military/intelligence cooperation with the United States.”

General Kayani had decided that the number of American troops in Pakistan was to be reduced “to the minimum essential,” the statement said.

He did not specify the exact number of American troops asked to leave Pakistan, and it was not clear that the level was below what Pakistan had previously demanded after a C.I.A. contractor shot and killed two Pakistanis in January.

Then, the Americans were told that the number of Special Operations soldiers involved in a training program would have to be reduced to 39 from 120, that C.I.A. contractors would no longer be allowed to stay in Pakistan, and that other American officials who appeared to be working for the C.I.A., but whose jobs were not clearly defined, would have to leave, too.

Clearly, the Bin Laden raid has compounded Pakistani anger, and further worsened relations.

Calling the American raid a “misadventure,” General Kayani told the Pakistani reporters that another, similar, raid would be responded to swiftly, a promise that seemed intended to tell the Pakistani public that the army was indeed capable of stopping the Americans’ trying to capture other senior figures from Al Qaeda.

General Kayani’s blunt warnings came after he met with his top commanders at their monthly conference at army headquarters at Rawalpindi, a gathering of the top 11 generals. The meeting was devoted to the consequences of the raid, which has severely embarrassed the Pakistani military, leaving the nation’s most prestigious institution looking poorly prepared and distrusted by its most important ally.

The official statement acknowledged “shortcomings” in developing intelligence on the presence of Bin Laden in Pakistan, a reference to the fact that the Qaeda leader was hiding in a compound in Abbottabad, a midsize city that is home to a top military academy and is about two hours from Islamabad, the capital.

The C.I.A. had developed intelligence on Bin Laden with the Pakistanis in the early going when the Pakistani spy agency, Inter-Services Intelligence, had provided “initial information.”

But the C.I.A. did not share further development of intelligence on the case with ISI, “contrary to the existing practice between the two services,” an account that generally conformed with what American officials said in the aftermath of the Bin Laden raid.

Pakistani officials and Western diplomats have described General Kayani and Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha, the head of ISI, as seething with anger at the American go-it-alone action.

In an earlier account on Thursday, the foreign secretary, Salman Bashir, sought to dispel domestic criticism of Pakistan’s lack of response to the raid, saying that two Pakistani F-16 fighter jets were airborne as soon as the Pakistani military knew about the operation. But, by that time, he said, the American helicopters were on their way back to Afghanistan.

Mr. Bashir, speaking at a news conference, said that the Americans had used technology to evade Pakistani radar.

Alternately combative and defensive, Mr. Bashir said Washington should abandon the idea that Pakistan was complicit in helping Bin Laden hide. But he did not elaborate, saying only that the ISI had a “brilliant” record in counterterrorism.

Defending the Pakistani Army, the fifth largest in the world, Mr. Bashir said, “Pakistani security forces are neither incompetent or negligent about the sacred duty to the nation to protect Pakistan.”

But after withering criticism at home and abroad about how and why the Pakistani security forces could allow Bin Laden to be in Pakistan, the initial reaction here to Mr. Bashir’s appearance was mixed.

One of Pakistan’s best-known television journalists, Kamran Khan, who is regarded as a supporter of the military, dismissed the performance. “They have no answer,” Mr. Khan said. “We have become the biggest haven of terrorism in the world and we have failed to stop it.”

A retired ambassador and newspaper columnist, Zafar Hilaly, who has called for a public inquiry into Pakistan’s military, said that Mr. Bashir had erred in seeming to ask for the world’s sympathy by saying 30,000 Pakistani civilians and more than 3,000 soldiers had lost their lives in the fight against terrorism.

“The world wants to know whether we are effective,” Mr. Hilaly said.

Apparently in response to comments by American officials that the United States decided not to share details in advance with Pakistan because of a lack of trust, Mr. Bashir said, “All we expect is some decency and civility, especially in the public domain.”

The Pakistani authorities first learned of the operation when one of the American helicopters involved in the raid crashed at the Bin Laden compound.

“Immediately our armed forces were asked to check whether it was a Pakistani helicopter,” Mr. Bashir said. Although Abbottabad is home to a major military academy and three military regiments, he said, none of these institutions required sophisticated defenses that could have detected the impending raid.

The authorities learned that Bin Laden had been killed in the raid from surviving members of his family, he said.

Pakistan received the first official word from the United States about the covert operation when the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen, called General Kayani about 3 a.m. Monday local time, Mr. Bashir said.

That call took some time to arrange, he said, because “secure sets” were needed. Mr. Bashir said Admiral Mullen had been the first to raise the issue of Pakistan’s sovereignty in the call, but he did not specify exactly what the admiral said. Later, President Obama telephoned the Pakistani president, Asif Ali Zardari.

The relationship between the United States and Pakistan will endure, the foreign secretary said, because “we share strategic convergence.”

In Washington, American aid to Pakistan faced new criticism. The top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Thursday expressed “deep and ongoing concerns” about the United States providing Pakistan more than $1 billion a year in security assistance in light of the discovery of Bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad and other recent evidence that Pakistan’s military and intelligence agencies are aiding militants.

The lawmaker, Representative Howard L. Berman of California, wrote in a letter to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton that “Pakistan’s continued resistance to cooperate with the United States in counterterrorism bespeaks an overall regression in the relationship.”

View the original article here

Pakistani Army Chief Warns U.S. on Another Raid

In his first public reaction to the American raid early Monday that left many Pakistanis questioning the capacities of the nation’s army, General Kayani did not appear in person, choosing instead to convey his angry message through a statement by his press office and in a closed meeting with Pakistani reporters.

The statement by the army’s press office said, “Any similar action violating the sovereignty of Pakistan will warrant a review on the level of military/intelligence cooperation with the United States.”

General Kayani had decided that the number of American troops in Pakistan was to be reduced “to the minimum essential,” the statement said.

He did not specify the exact number of American troops asked to leave Pakistan, and it was not clear that the level was below what Pakistan had previously demanded after a C.I.A. contractor shot and killed two Pakistanis in January.

Then, the Americans were told that the number of Special Operations soldiers involved in a training program would have to be reduced to 39 from 120, that C.I.A. contractors would no longer be allowed to stay in Pakistan, and that other American officials who appeared to be working for the C.I.A., but whose jobs were not clearly defined, would have to leave, too.

Clearly, the Bin Laden raid has compounded Pakistani anger, and further worsened relations.

Calling the American raid a “misadventure,” General Kayani told the Pakistani reporters that another, similar, raid would be responded to swiftly, a promise that seemed intended to tell the Pakistani public that the army was indeed capable of stopping the Americans’ trying to capture other senior figures from Al Qaeda.

General Kayani’s blunt warnings came after he met with his top commanders at their monthly conference at army headquarters at Rawalpindi, a gathering of the top 11 generals. The meeting was devoted to the consequences of the raid, which has severely embarrassed the Pakistani military, leaving the nation’s most prestigious institution looking poorly prepared and distrusted by its most important ally.

The official statement acknowledged “shortcomings” in developing intelligence on the presence of Bin Laden in Pakistan, a reference to the fact that the Qaeda leader was hiding in a compound in Abbottabad, a midsize city that is home to a top military academy and is about two hours from Islamabad, the capital.

The C.I.A. had developed intelligence on Bin Laden with the Pakistanis in the early going when the Pakistani spy agency, Inter-Services Intelligence, had provided “initial information.”

But the C.I.A. did not share further development of intelligence on the case with ISI, “contrary to the existing practice between the two services,” an account that generally conformed with what American officials said in the aftermath of the Bin Laden raid.

Pakistani officials and Western diplomats have described General Kayani and Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha, the head of ISI, as seething with anger at the American go-it-alone action.

In an earlier account on Thursday, the foreign secretary, Salman Bashir, sought to dispel domestic criticism of Pakistan’s lack of response to the raid, saying that two Pakistani F-16 fighter jets were airborne as soon as the Pakistani military knew about the operation. But, by that time, he said, the American helicopters were on their way back to Afghanistan.

Mr. Bashir, speaking at a news conference, said that the Americans had used technology to evade Pakistani radar.

Alternately combative and defensive, Mr. Bashir said Washington should abandon the idea that Pakistan was complicit in helping Bin Laden hide. But he did not elaborate, saying only that the ISI had a “brilliant” record in counterterrorism.

Defending the Pakistani Army, the fifth largest in the world, Mr. Bashir said, “Pakistani security forces are neither incompetent or negligent about the sacred duty to the nation to protect Pakistan.”

But after withering criticism at home and abroad about how and why the Pakistani security forces could allow Bin Laden to be in Pakistan, the initial reaction here to Mr. Bashir’s appearance was mixed.

One of Pakistan’s best-known television journalists, Kamran Khan, who is regarded as a supporter of the military, dismissed the performance. “They have no answer,” Mr. Khan said. “We have become the biggest haven of terrorism in the world and we have failed to stop it.”

A retired ambassador and newspaper columnist, Zafar Hilaly, who has called for a public inquiry into Pakistan’s military, said that Mr. Bashir had erred in seeming to ask for the world’s sympathy by saying 30,000 Pakistani civilians and more than 3,000 soldiers had lost their lives in the fight against terrorism.

“The world wants to know whether we are effective,” Mr. Hilaly said.

Apparently in response to comments by American officials that the United States decided not to share details in advance with Pakistan because of a lack of trust, Mr. Bashir said, “All we expect is some decency and civility, especially in the public domain.”

The Pakistani authorities first learned of the operation when one of the American helicopters involved in the raid crashed at the Bin Laden compound.

“Immediately our armed forces were asked to check whether it was a Pakistani helicopter,” Mr. Bashir said. Although Abbottabad is home to a major military academy and three military regiments, he said, none of these institutions required sophisticated defenses that could have detected the impending raid.

The authorities learned that Bin Laden had been killed in the raid from surviving members of his family, he said.

Pakistan received the first official word from the United States about the covert operation when the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen, called General Kayani about 3 a.m. Monday local time, Mr. Bashir said.

That call took some time to arrange, he said, because “secure sets” were needed. Mr. Bashir said Admiral Mullen had been the first to raise the issue of Pakistan’s sovereignty in the call, but he did not specify exactly what the admiral said. Later, President Obama telephoned the Pakistani president, Asif Ali Zardari.

The relationship between the United States and Pakistan will endure, the foreign secretary said, because “we share strategic convergence.”

In Washington, American aid to Pakistan faced new criticism. The top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Thursday expressed “deep and ongoing concerns” about the United States providing Pakistan more than $1 billion a year in security assistance in light of the discovery of Bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad and other recent evidence that Pakistan’s military and intelligence agencies are aiding militants.

The lawmaker, Representative Howard L. Berman of California, wrote in a letter to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton that “Pakistan’s continued resistance to cooperate with the United States in counterterrorism bespeaks an overall regression in the relationship.”

View the original article here

Another Side of Tilapia, the Perfect Factory Fish

But at the Aquafinca fish farm here, a modern miracle takes place daily: Tens of thousands of beefy, flapping tilapia are hauled out of teeming cages on Lake Yojoa, converted to fillets in a cold slaughterhouse and rushed onto planes bound for the United States, where some will appear on plates within 12 hours.

Americans ate 475 million pounds of tilapia last year, four times the amount a decade ago, making this once obscure African native the most popular farmed fish in the United States. Although wild fish predominate in most species, a vast majority of the tilapia consumed in the United States is “harvested” from pens or cages in Latin America and Asia.

Known in the food business as “aquatic chicken” because it breeds easily and tastes bland, tilapia is the perfect factory fish; it happily eats pellets made largely of corn and soy and gains weight rapidly, easily converting a diet that resembles cheap chicken feed into low-cost seafood.

“Ten years ago no one had heard of it; now everyone wants it because it doesn’t have a fishy taste, especially hospitals and schools,” said Orlando Delgado, general manager of Aquafinca.

Farmed tilapia is promoted as good for your health and for the environment at a time when many marine stocks have been seriously depleted. “Did you know the American Heart Association recommends eating fish twice a week?” asks the industry Web site, abouttilapia.com. But tilapia has both nutritional and environmental drawbacks.

Compared with other fish, farmed tilapia contains relatively small amounts of beneficial omega-3 fatty acids, the fish oils that are the main reasons doctors recommend eating fish frequently; salmon has more than 10 times the amount of tilapia. Also, farmed tilapia contains a less healthful mix of fatty acids because the fish are fed corn and soy instead of lake plants and algae, the diet of wild tilapia.

“It may look like fish and taste like fish but does not have the benefits — it may be detrimental,” said Dr. Floyd Chilton, a professor of physiology and pharmacology at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center who specializes in fish lipids.

Environmentalists argue that intensive and unregulated tilapia farming is damaging ecosystems in poor countries with practices generally prohibited in the United States — like breeding huge numbers of fish in cages in natural lakes, where fish waste pollutes the water. “We wouldn’t allow tilapia to be farmed in the United States the way they are farmed here, so why are we willing to eat them?” said Dr. Jeffrey McCrary, an American fish biologist who works in Nicaragua. “We are exporting the environmental damage caused by our appetites.”

Defenders of tilapia aquaculture point out that this young and rapidly growing industry has begun improving standards and toughening regulation. The two-year-old Aquaculture Stewardship Council, the brainchild of the conservation organization WWF and I.D.H., a Dutch sustainable trade program, is rolling out an inspection program for tilapia farms independent of the industry. Those that choose to participate — and pass — will receive labels identifying their product as “responsibly farmed.”

In a nod to its growing popularity, this year tilapia’s will be the first of 10 fish certification programs to be initiated. Aquafinca, which began adopting more environmentally friendly cultivation in 2006 to better appeal to large corporate customers like Costco, this year became the first farm to pass an initial inspection.

Proponents say tilapia aquaculture will only grow in importance because it provides food and jobs in a world of declining fish stocks and rising population. “There are going to be more farmed fish each year,” said Kevin Fitzsimmons, a biologist at the University of Arizona. “Think about it: if we tried to get beef from hunting, there would be a lot of hungry people.”

From Africa to the World

Native to lakes in Africa, this versatile warm-water fish was deployed by many governments in poor tropical countries around the world in the second half of the 20th century to control weeds and mosquitoes in lakes and rivers. In a cistern or pond, a few fish yielded dietary protein.

In retrospect, that global dispersal “maybe was not the best idea,” said Aaron McNevin, a WWF biologist who is coordinating the development of standards for tilapia farms, because tilapia “is one of the most invasive species known and very hard to get rid of once they are established.” Today, wild tilapia has squeezed out native species in lakes throughout the world with its aggressive breeding and feeding.

By the 1990s, businesses saw opportunity in farming this hearty species, which tolerates crowding and does not need expensive meat-based feed. Using selective breeding, scientists created today’s industrial strains: big, fleshy fish with tiny heads and tails, and intestines that allow them to absorb food faster. Farmed tilapia reaches its sales weight of about two pounds in roughly nine months of intensive feeding.

“Nature is for maintaining species; what we do is make fillets,” said Danilo Sosa, a technician at the tilapia breeding pens of Nicanor Fish Farms, outside Managua, Nicaragua, plopping a tilapia used for breeding on a wooden table and scanning the chip in its gut that identifies its breeding line.

Last year, more than 52 million pounds of fresh tilapia were exported to the United States, mostly from Latin America, as well as 422 million more pounds of frozen tilapia, both whole and fillet, nearly all from China, according to the United States Department of Agriculture.

The growth has been abetted by the creation and marketing of new products like fleshy “tilapia loins” — even though fish do not possess that anatomical feature.

For United States shoppers picking up tilapia from China or Honduras or Ecuador, there is little guidance. “It’s such a complicated job for consumers to decide what to eat, with aquaculture production expanding so rapidly,” said Peter Bridson, aquaculture research manager of the Monterey Bay Aquarium, which produces the popular Seafood Watch, an independent consumer guide to buying sustainable fish.

The new sustainability standards being developed for aquaculture will be tailored by species to address their diverse environmental risks. For tilapia, that means fish cages can be placed only in lakes where tilapia already live, and must be designed to prevent escapes. To limit overtaxing of lakes, the new guidelines establish water quality rules for oxygen and phosphorus, a product of fish waste.

Fish farms may not use prophylactic antibiotics. But even the new rules allow for some practices considered unacceptable in the United States, where cage farming in lakes is generally forbidden. In many states, tilapia must be housed in specially designed pens with roofs to prevent birds from carrying the fish elsewhere; their waste is often collected to use as fertilizer rather than released. Also, the new standards allow for baby fish to be fed testosterone even though markets like Whole Foods will not buy hormone-treated seafood.

Blake Schmidt contributed reporting from Managua, Nicaragua.

 

Another Side of Tilapia, the Perfect Factory Fish

But at the Aquafinca fish farm here, a modern miracle takes place daily: Tens of thousands of beefy, flapping tilapia are hauled out of teeming cages on Lake Yojoa, converted to fillets in a cold slaughterhouse and rushed onto planes bound for the United States, where some will appear on plates within 12 hours.

Americans ate 475 million pounds of tilapia last year, four times the amount a decade ago, making this once obscure African native the most popular farmed fish in the United States. Although wild fish predominate in most species, a vast majority of the tilapia consumed in the United States is “harvested” from pens or cages in Latin America and Asia.

Known in the food business as “aquatic chicken” because it breeds easily and tastes bland, tilapia is the perfect factory fish; it happily eats pellets made largely of corn and soy and gains weight rapidly, easily converting a diet that resembles cheap chicken feed into low-cost seafood.

“Ten years ago no one had heard of it; now everyone wants it because it doesn’t have a fishy taste, especially hospitals and schools,” said Orlando Delgado, general manager of Aquafinca.

Farmed tilapia is promoted as good for your health and for the environment at a time when many marine stocks have been seriously depleted. “Did you know the American Heart Association recommends eating fish twice a week?” asks the industry Web site, abouttilapia.com. But tilapia has both nutritional and environmental drawbacks.

Compared with other fish, farmed tilapia contains relatively small amounts of beneficial omega-3 fatty acids, the fish oils that are the main reasons doctors recommend eating fish frequently; salmon has more than 10 times the amount of tilapia. Also, farmed tilapia contains a less healthful mix of fatty acids because the fish are fed corn and soy instead of lake plants and algae, the diet of wild tilapia.

“It may look like fish and taste like fish but does not have the benefits — it may be detrimental,” said Dr. Floyd Chilton, a professor of physiology and pharmacology at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center who specializes in fish lipids.

Environmentalists argue that intensive and unregulated tilapia farming is damaging ecosystems in poor countries with practices generally prohibited in the United States — like breeding huge numbers of fish in cages in natural lakes, where fish waste pollutes the water. “We wouldn’t allow tilapia to be farmed in the United States the way they are farmed here, so why are we willing to eat them?” said Dr. Jeffrey McCrary, an American fish biologist who works in Nicaragua. “We are exporting the environmental damage caused by our appetites.”

Defenders of tilapia aquaculture point out that this young and rapidly growing industry has begun improving standards and toughening regulation. The two-year-old Aquaculture Stewardship Council, the brainchild of the conservation organization WWF and I.D.H., a Dutch sustainable trade program, is rolling out an inspection program for tilapia farms independent of the industry. Those that choose to participate — and pass — will receive labels identifying their product as “responsibly farmed.”

In a nod to its growing popularity, this year tilapia’s will be the first of 10 fish certification programs to be initiated. Aquafinca, which began adopting more environmentally friendly cultivation in 2006 to better appeal to large corporate customers like Costco, this year became the first farm to pass an initial inspection.

Proponents say tilapia aquaculture will only grow in importance because it provides food and jobs in a world of declining fish stocks and rising population. “There are going to be more farmed fish each year,” said Kevin Fitzsimmons, a biologist at the University of Arizona. “Think about it: if we tried to get beef from hunting, there would be a lot of hungry people.”

From Africa to the World

Native to lakes in Africa, this versatile warm-water fish was deployed by many governments in poor tropical countries around the world in the second half of the 20th century to control weeds and mosquitoes in lakes and rivers. In a cistern or pond, a few fish yielded dietary protein.

In retrospect, that global dispersal “maybe was not the best idea,” said Aaron McNevin, a WWF biologist who is coordinating the development of standards for tilapia farms, because tilapia “is one of the most invasive species known and very hard to get rid of once they are established.” Today, wild tilapia has squeezed out native species in lakes throughout the world with its aggressive breeding and feeding.

By the 1990s, businesses saw opportunity in farming this hearty species, which tolerates crowding and does not need expensive meat-based feed. Using selective breeding, scientists created today’s industrial strains: big, fleshy fish with tiny heads and tails, and intestines that allow them to absorb food faster. Farmed tilapia reaches its sales weight of about two pounds in roughly nine months of intensive feeding.

“Nature is for maintaining species; what we do is make fillets,” said Danilo Sosa, a technician at the tilapia breeding pens of Nicanor Fish Farms, outside Managua, Nicaragua, plopping a tilapia used for breeding on a wooden table and scanning the chip in its gut that identifies its breeding line.

Last year, more than 52 million pounds of fresh tilapia were exported to the United States, mostly from Latin America, as well as 422 million more pounds of frozen tilapia, both whole and fillet, nearly all from China, according to the United States Department of Agriculture.

The growth has been abetted by the creation and marketing of new products like fleshy “tilapia loins” — even though fish do not possess that anatomical feature.

For United States shoppers picking up tilapia from China or Honduras or Ecuador, there is little guidance. “It’s such a complicated job for consumers to decide what to eat, with aquaculture production expanding so rapidly,” said Peter Bridson, aquaculture research manager of the Monterey Bay Aquarium, which produces the popular Seafood Watch, an independent consumer guide to buying sustainable fish.

The new sustainability standards being developed for aquaculture will be tailored by species to address their diverse environmental risks. For tilapia, that means fish cages can be placed only in lakes where tilapia already live, and must be designed to prevent escapes. To limit overtaxing of lakes, the new guidelines establish water quality rules for oxygen and phosphorus, a product of fish waste.

Fish farms may not use prophylactic antibiotics. But even the new rules allow for some practices considered unacceptable in the United States, where cage farming in lakes is generally forbidden. In many states, tilapia must be housed in specially designed pens with roofs to prevent birds from carrying the fish elsewhere; their waste is often collected to use as fertilizer rather than released. Also, the new standards allow for baby fish to be fed testosterone even though markets like Whole Foods will not buy hormone-treated seafood.

Blake Schmidt contributed reporting from Managua, Nicaragua.