The Pandemic in a Can

By Paul Greenberg, Safina Center Fellow

In mid-April as death and destruction raged around my apartment in lower Manhattan the world's major newspapers really wanted to talk to me about canned fish. Queries came in from The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal and a host of other media, all wanting to know my thoughts. In the storm of the pandemic and the creaking of the global food supply, canned fish were being swept from stores right and left. If I'd owned anchovy futures I would have been a rich man.

Peruvian anchovy being processed in a “reduction plant” where fish is processed for various purposes. Photo: Paul Greenberg

But the fact is, I thought I was finally done with canned fish.

From 2014-2017 I spent night and day thinking about canned fish for a book I was writing called The Omega Principle. During that time I traveled to seaports around the globe where small pelagic fish like anchovies, herring and sardines were purse seined by the millions and spirited away from sea birds, tuna and other large predators that depend on these little fish for the bulk of their calories. In all small pelagics represent nearly a quarter of the global catch — more than 20 million metric tons taken out of the sea year after year.

Peruvian anchovies. Photo: Paul Greenberg

As someone who fishes and eats more than his fair share of fish, I would have in part understood this harvest were the fish being put to some sort of broad culinary use. Small pelagics, after all, are extremely high in omega-3 fatty acids and from a carbon emissions perspective represent the absolute cheapest way humans can get protein on their plate in the modern world. But the insidious thing about the harvest of those 20 million tons of little fish a year was that almost none of it ever came close to a can. The vast majority of all of those fish is boiled down into meal and oil and sold as salmon, chicken and pig feed. True some of it gets used for a few other purposes. Eighty percent of the Maine herring catch ends up, for example, as lobster bait.

Protein content of anchovies is displayed at reduction plant. Photo: Paul Greenberg

But this spring everybody wanted to talk about how to eat canned fish. How a can of anchovies can be worked into a tomato sauce in a matter of minutes. How sardines can be pureed into butter to make a creamy delicious spread. How herring really isn't that bad, after all.

Now as summer dawns and the thought of cans of fish starts to feel repulsive again to the finicky American diner, I think I might just try to get some of those anchovy futures as the prices tank. One day, humans will realize that we can no longer afford to throw wild animals into the furnace of cheap industrial reduction. If we're going to do anything at all with those valuable little fish we should pay well for them, treat them with care in the kitchen and put them directly on our plates. Half the fish at twice the price. That, to me seems to be a fair deal for whole order of creatures that has gotten such a bad deal for so long.