“170 to 700 billion fish raised and fed live to mandarin fish in China per year ” by MichaelStJules

Summary. Around 1.2 to 1.9 trillion fish fry have been produced by artificial propagation (breeding) annually in China, and it seems those farmed for direct human consumption and pre-harvest mortality can only account for at most around 460 billion of them (more). I estimate that 170 billion to 700 billion animals (my 80% credible interval) — probably almost all artificially propagated fish — are fed live to mandarin fish (or Chinese perch), Siniperca chuatsi, in China annually, with 9 to 55 billion of them (my 80% credible interval) alive at any time (more, Guesstimate model). By contrast, the number of farmed fish produced globally for direct human consumption is around 111 billion per year, and 103 billion alive at a time, with another 35 to 150 billion raised and stocked per year (Šimčikas, 2020). It's unclear how bad their deaths are as live feed to mandarin fish, but I’d guess they die by suffocation [...] ---Outline:(01:55) Acknowledgements(02:06) Fish fry production in China(06:30) Fish raised to become feed for farmed animals(14:18) Mandarin fish farming(14:30) Mandarin fish diets(17:25) Scale of mandarin fish farming and feed(20:45) How bad is being live fed to mandarin fish?(24:41) Intervention ideas(25:03) Feed substitution(28:47) Alternatives for maintaining water quality(29:54) Reducing mandarin fish production(30:59) Welfare reforms for artificially propagated fishThe original text contained 9 footnotes which were omitted from this narration. --- First published: June 8th, 2024 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/j5XTuJqbE3CK7fTCM/170-to-700-billion-fish-raised-and-fed-live-to-mandarin-fish --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.