Eating dinner with conservation biologists was like walking through a minefield of ethical decisions: grasslands have been overgrazed by steer raised for beef, and all cattle emit greenhouse gases though enteric fermentation; the poop from industrially raised chickens poisons the Chesapeake; the Amazon has been slashed and burned for soy–and don’t even mention seafood. To this bunch of herpetologists, the sin of ordering shrimp lay in the bycatch–young fish, and especially sea turtles, caught in the nets and discarded, dead or dying.

Eating dinner with conservation biologists was like walking through a minefield of ethical decisions: grasslands have been overgrazed by steer raised for beef, and all cattle emit greenhouse gases though enteric fermentation; the poop from industrially raised chickens poisons the Chesapeake; the Amazon has been slashed and burned for soy–and don’t even mention seafood. To this bunch of herpetologists, the sin of ordering shrimp lay in the bycatch–young fish, and especially sea turtles, caught in the nets and discarded, dead or dying.

– Joe Roman –

Listed: Dispatches from America’s Endangered Species Act

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