The Case Against Octopus Farming
issues.org
issues.org
It's a good argument for eating less meat overall, one vegetarians seem to never make. In a world full of unprecedented levels of relatively new toxic compounds, eating less meat is a good defensive move, especially so if you have health problems.
I'm really picky about meat quality. In situations where my choice is something with low quality/highly questionable meat or a vegetarian option, I typically go with the vegetarian option.
Though be forewarned: It's a dietary path that gets you equally harassed by vegetarians and the meat-and-potatoes crowd, which can be incredibly aggravating and feel like the harassment is unceasing.
Now if you were to talk about ethics THAT gets a strong reaction simply because it’s much more intuitive and relatable. People’s responses can be receptive, antagonist, dismissive etc. but they certainly won’t be falling asleep in front of you.
Most people don't like that awkwardness, so it's not surprising that you get pushback.
I ended up just cutting out farmed meat in the end. As far as meat goes, I can eat what I kill. Apart from if someone has already got me food and didn't know, as to turn that down seems both a waste and kind of rude.
Pretty common rule for mendicant Buddhists, as I understand it. No meat is the general rule, but if you go a-begging and someone gives you meat, and you don't have reason to believe they killed something (or had someone else kill something) specifically for you, then you're good to eat it (or even obligated to).
My eyes would be glossing over in both cases. I've been confronted with this information many times in the past; often against my wishes despite the social cues I'm giving. It's not that you're wrong, or I don't care, or I don't get it. In the moment, I might even be interested. But the evangelists have burnt me out.
Seafood is different, since the food chain can be significantly longer and more complex.
https://nutritionfacts.org/video/cannibalistic-feed-biomagni...
IIRC, such things tend to accumulate most in the fat, fwiw.
Plants definitely do have different rate of heavy metal accumulation, and presumably other toxins, though I'm not aware of any evidence that a typical feedlot diet of corn+soy is better than all grass with regards to potential toxin bio-accumulation. This isn't to say that there may not be other health benefits to raising pasture animals on 100% grass.
Animal-based animal feed is certainly a thing, though in my experience "100% vegetarian" diet is often the the cheapest type of meat. Organic meat, while more expensive, guarantees it will be raised "without antibiotics, added growth hormones, mammalian or avian byproducts" [0]. This does seem to exclude fish-meal type feed, which presumably is allowed to be used in organic meat production - though I'd assume its more economical to use a plant based feed in almost all cases.
[0] https://www.ams.usda.gov/sites/default/files/media/Organic%2...
Grass fed beef is more nutritious than grain fed (easily googled).
Grass fed beef is leaner and has a noticeably different fat composition (easily googled). This is pertinent to bioaccumulation because fat is usually where stores of toxic chemicals are at their worst, iirc.
Grain fed beef is typically fattened up in feed lots which can be vectors for disease (easily googled).
Grass fed is typically exposed to fewer pesticides. Sources:
https://nutritiouslife.com/eat-empowered/grass-fed-beef-orga...
http://www.certifiedgrassfedmeats.com
I'm not a stickler for only eating grass fed beef. However, I have gone through periods where I was extremely ill and found that it was very worthwhile to only get meat labeled "grass fed." I was much more able to tolerate it and it didn't severely acidify my system the way meat sometimes can, which is consistent with the fact that grass fed beef is much higher in Omega 3 fats.
I'm not trying to lecture anyone, dictate how they should eat, etc. I was just making the observation that if the point of the article is to persuade, then they missed a potentially big detail in terms of arguing from a position of enlightened self interest rather than morality. It's a detail that's often overlooked by people trying to persuade others to "do the right thing, eat less meat!" and another reply to me cast a bit of light on possibly why it is so often overlooked.
I have a sheep farm. We have to be very careful not to confuse the sheep grain ration with the chicken feed. They look exactly the same, but chicken pellet has copper in it, and sheep can't metabolize copper. We also have to be careful not to accidentally buy or feed goat ration for the same reason.
That said, "grass fed" is complicated too. In a lot of places the cattle are grazing on unimproved rangeland. It isn't even fertilized. But in some places the farmers will explicitly plant forage crops such as wheatgrass; these will typically be fertilized, and possibly treated with herbicide or pesticide. Fertilizer is usually an industrial nitrogen fertilizer, but it can also be composted manure. I know of at least some farms near where I grew up that were at points treated with concentrated sludge from sewage treatment plants, in which case you would definitely expect to get heavy metal accumulation, even in straight grass fed animals. Happily my family never went that route.
Chickens naturally peck about for worms, insects, seeds, etc...
What is "minimal"? Bioaccumulation isn't a magic meter that says "everyting below this trophic level is safe to eat." It depends on the persistent toxin ( I choose the word toxin because bioaccumulation can occur for chemicals beyond heavy metals, like organochlorine pesticides ) that you're looking at, and what is the safe dose for humans.
E.g. let's say you have pesticide A and pesticide B. Cattle eat a certain amount of feed per day. At time of slaughter, pesticide A and B have a certain amount of concentration in fat tissue. It doesn't matter which has the highest concentration, it matters which is less safe to humans and at what concentration it harms us when it accumulates in our own tissues.
Whilst it's true that these concentrate in carnivores this is not a reason why we eat mostly herbivores.
Herbivores were plentiful and less dangerous to hunt. Then, herbivores are much easier and more economical to breed (you would need to breed herbivores first if you wanted to breed carnivores...)
You'll note that these decisions were made long before people even knew about heavy metals or had pesticides.
That may be the interpretation under Judaism, but outside of Judaism I think people can take a decent stab at understanding.
Matthew 5:6 -- "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled."
Matthew 6:16 -- “When you fast, do not look somber as the hypocrites do, for they disfigure their faces to show others they are fasting. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. 17 But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, 18 so that it will not be obvious to others that you are fasting, but only to your Father, who is unseen; and your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you."
A little more detail as to context: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_6:16
Fasting has been beneficial to my incurable medical condition. I'm quite encouraged by the association between fasting and religion. To me, it suggests there is something fundamentally wise about the practice and important to human health.
Such as?
https://m.phys.org/news/2017-02-scientists-categorize-earth-...
Sounds like woo-woo to me.
What kind of people are you mixing with if they are ceaselessly harassing you for what kind of food you're eating?
Aside from mother-in-law wanting to know why I’m not eating her (dish), I don’t think anyone in real life has ever inquired about what is on my plate and why. And who the hell really would, beyond “that looks good, what are you having?”
For those who see the world through the experience frame, they will be more worried about the negative impacts toward an individual octopus, seeing it as an intelligent creature that shouldn’t need to endure our fishing practices.
For those that see the world through the existence frame, the potential genocidal and even eco-system crashing impact of overfishing or various fishing practices is more vital than what happens to any individual creature.
Maybe this would be better as two articles, one that appeals to each type.
You should point out the issue for all the tl;dr people.
The issue is that farming carnivorous seafood is a net ecosystem loss. This applies to more than just octopi.
In the case of an octopus, the conversion rate is about 3:1--you have to feed an octopus about 3 times it's weight in "other fish". Similar ratios are true for other carnivorous fish--none are less than 1.
Consequently, aquaculture farming of carnivorous species causes more overfishing and ecosystem strain and contributes nothing to food security.
(Yawn) and this is a terrific, good, not bad, conversion rate. Better than rabbit, broilers, pork and much better than "holy herbivorous cattle" beef. And the same food gave to a human would have a conversion rate of 10:0, because the stuff would never be approved as human-grade food.
But can be still feed to another animal and used to make excellent food. Octopus is a high quality human food, healthy and more expensive than the tasteless Tilapia or swimming-in-poo-nd carp for a reason. Iron scraps are cheaper than titanium also.
Maybe the problem could be that some people dislike octopus by "put random reason here" (religion, virtue signaling, fear to slimy creatures, not included in tyrolean tradition or classified as alien life form in Nuevo Mexico?...) and lobby to discourage its use as human food.
This people (at least many of them) are hypocritical. Most wouldn't have any problem saying that whereas munching their fried broiler chicken wings, made of young birds 100 days old. Most wouldn't have any ethical problem with the idea of killing and eating a delicious and pray-safe 20 days old lamb.
... but to eat a 3Yo adult octopus in the end of its life cycle (that will die by natural processes in a few months in any case)... this is unethical?. Nonsense
> If octopuses of some species can be kept together in moderate numbers and in larger enclosures with significant enrichment, this might mitigate some, though not all, of the welfare problems.
"Octopuses must be smart as chimps so they must be treated the same".
Wrong, they are solitary animals. All of the species fished. They tolerate other sexes only in reproduction and females could ignore other females (nesting at a safe distance) when taking care of its own nest.
From a young octopus to be in the same enclosure as another octopus mean only two things: dinner or imminent and stressful risk of death. To suggest that this would put more emotion in its sad lifes is like suggesting to improve the life of a zebra putting a lion in the same enclosure to play.
> Such efforts are occurring despite the fact that octopus farming has the same environmental consequences as other types of carnivorous aquaculture.
Consequences that include for example more small fishes using the area as nursery and sanctuary because there are not trawls anymore in the area. Or most ship noise and human activity concentrated now in a single point of the coast. The author suggests that all consequences are bad for biodiversity but this is false. Some are bad and other positive. Biodiversity around tuna enclosures is surprisingly high for example.
> And, like other carnivorous aquaculture, octopus farming would increase, not alleviate, pressure on wild aquatic animals
Same product. Indistinguisable taste. Two different prices. What the people will buy?
Pressure will increase in the same way as having a cheap alternative of phone will made everybody buy only the model of my-phone encrusted with diamonds. Why to eat cheap and available sheep meat all the year, when you could sell your house and eat wild himalayan blue sheep meat (only in november) instead?
Nine of each 10 sea breams that you can eat in your restaurant are domesticated, and you can find gilthead sea bream all the months of the year now, in all restaurants, because this fact.
I don't see how this is an inaccuracy in the article. The part just before your quote says octopus farming will be either uneconomical or we'll have to put each of them into a tiny solitary confinement cell, far from being species-appropriate. The article then leaves some escape hatch to be less absolutist, that you apparently didn't like. I don't see much of a problem with a sentence like that... after all, trained wolf's are used to guard sheep's. That comes quite close to your example.
Their place can be adjusted to its size. Tiny animals can be very comfortable sitting in tiny cages with all their sides protected.
To produce a Kg of cow meat you'll need to provide about ``X'' Kg of cow food with an economic value of ``Y'' dollars. Is useful to do logistics and make a guess of what could be your benefits and loses. Is more about economy than about ecology or energy flux.
"Given their exceptional abilities, one might ask whether humans should be eating octopus at all, but here we want to raise a different ethical question."
So we can eat stupid animals, but not the more intelligent ones, right? That's absolutely logically and ethically bonkers to just write this down as if it were a common piece of shared knowledge and give it for granted.
Ranking animals by intelligence is not the only way to decide your ethics of consumption. If I want to look close to home, I can consider the ethics of the First Nations people who have lived in the area I now live in. They have a sophisticated ethic of consumption that does not rely on intelligence-ranking. Or we can look at other points of view that privilege the land and its health, and direct decisions from there.
Blindness about our assumptions and hypotheses doesn't help the conversation. Let's set out our axioms.
As the New Guinea man said to the missionary, "If God didn't want us to eat people He wouldn't have made us out of meat."
https://www.seafoodwatch.org/seafood-recommendations/groups/...
http://seafood.edf.org/octopus
There are sustainable and unsustainable sources. The same is true of all seafood.
The life expectancy of octopus is generally between 3-5 years, some live as little as 6 months. The extent of their intelligence is unclear. At most we have evidence that they have the capacity for long and short term memory. Given the standard of intelligence for animals cultures otherwise consume, this doesn't seem remarkable at all. To chase the ethical argument to it's logical end, as one of intelligence is purported, the only ethical animal then to consume is a non-sentient one.
Is it better for an animal to be farmed and eaten, or to have never been born at all?
(Assuming we can farm them safely / humanely, even though the article suggests we cannot do so yet)
I don't really know how to classify sentience, but I would have thought that birds qualify.
Lets say aliens came and offered you a deal. You can either not exist or live a life of luxury with all delicious food and mates you want, then after 1000 years or so you'd peacefully pass away just like a natural death and you are informed that they'd eat your body. I'm pretty sure quite a few people would be open to this.The choice is even simpler with animals since from all evidence they lack the capacity for existential dread.
Now tell, me what would be the most moral choice assuming chickens are sentient? To indulge them to a pampered existence several times their natural lifespan...and yes, at the end disposing of their bodies in the most practical and beneficial way, its not like a chicken cares what happens to its mortal shell in whatever poultry afterlife may exist. Or leave chicken minds to the terror of being torn up by a fox in the wilderness or to never know the joys of existence in the paradise future ethical meat farms may offer?
If your ethical code is a variation of 'reducing pain and increasing pleasure for all sentient life' this would be orders of magnitude more good then the Peta option of turning them loose to die in the wild or never exist. It would be far more ethical than even artificial meat.
Heck from a strict cost/benefit analysis it may be one of the greatest moral triumphs mankind has ever given the universe.
Why would an industrial food processor care about how luxurious the sentient inventory finds the warehouse?
There is some chance that I will accept the deal, just to buy more time and find weaknesses in the aliens. Anyway, I would prefer to die free on my own, and I would prefer that my family gets to take my body and cremate it, or give it to earthly elements.
If a woman dies, we don't feel sorrow for any children (or their children, or their children's children, etc, etc) that will never be born. I am not a murderer for denying life to the billions and billions of people that will not be born if I've chosen not to have kids. Neither am I a hero for saving billions and billions of people if I choose to have kids (and good God, make sure my kids have kids and their kids have kids, etc, etc).
The question just comes down to: is it OK to keep animals to be farmed and eaten. If the answer is "no", then you gain nothing by bringing new lives into the world to subject them to it. If the answer is "yes", then there isn't a dilemma.
I don't feel like any of these points of view actually anwser the question "is it better to not exist or to exist and suffer", they're just different ways of framing the question.
Really, it doesn't matter if an animal that doesn't exist would 'prefer' to exist in suffering, because that's a purely counter-factual fantasy to begin with. All that matters is whether we should prefer such an animal to exist. Anyone who prefers they wouldn't based on vague moral arguments has to reconcile that with the fact that killing those animals for food is right in line with correcting the 'error' of their birth.
A better way to make the argument is to appeal to things we do actually care about in an ethically consistent manner: how inefficient and wasteful it is to raise animals for food. If you have something that is more efficient, tastes better, and is healthier, then it becomes harder to justify that waste, regardless of anyone's moral position on suffering. Anything else is just an reasonless appeal to emotion.
Quite impossible to answer generic questions and better/worse without defining boundaries.
...which we farm and eat like crazy!
Inherently it’s no less ethical for us to eat them than it is for them to eat fish. The conditions we keep them in and the impact on the wider environment is seperate
To simplify The amount of feed needed to sustain and grow an octpus is three times the weight of the animal itself where feed is delicious protein.
So, in practice it’s more a question of feed stock ratios. Salmon for example can be fed a low percentage of soybeans to lower costs. However, as you can’t replace even 50% of the feed stock with plants the overall argument is still valid.
The small problem is that the taste of this fishes is plain awful and _nobody_wants_to_buy_it_.
There are plenty of cow breams in the wild, but you rarely will find it in your fish shop. And if you eventually find it, will be a really cheap product. Try it. Most people will not buy it twice.
Investors aren't stupid. They risk a lot of their money and put incredible efforts to breed carnivorous fishes for a logical reason. Everybody loves its taste and are willing to pay good money for it!.
> The amount of feed needed to sustain and grow an octpus is three times the weight of the animal itself and, given that octopuses are carnivorous and live on fish oils and protein, rearing them risks putting further pressure on an already over-exploited marine ecoystem.
The calories spent on raising and consuming animals higher in the food chain is exponentially more than consuming those lower in the food chain. This is the point they are trying to make. It wasnt about the ethics of eating Octopus itself, but the means in which they are being raised / procured.
Yes, it seemed a little superfluous given the last third of the paragraph makes the point that farming them is putting undue stress (in comparison to alternative food sources) on the environment.
> They are talking about the environmental impact of octopus
They're talking about both the environmental impact and the ethics of carnivores.
> Farming octopuses is not only unethical but deeply damaging to the environment, scientists say.
>There is already a wealth of research that suggests octopuses are one of the most complex and intelligent animals in the ocean. They can recognise individual human faces, solve problems (and remember the answers for months) and there is some evidence they experience pain and suffering. Numerous videos on the internet of octopuses escaping from their tanks or stealing fishermen's catches have fuelled a human fascination with the only invertebrate that the 2012 Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness considers sentient alongside mammals and birds.
Ignoring the farming and catching practices used to get most octopuses from the sea to the plate, which most certainly are unethical since they are unnecessary and cruel, and only look at "eating another being", I still think you are missing the point that octopuses has to eat the fish to survive since they are mostly carnivore's and don't have modern farming practices and supermarkets available, whereas we are omnivores and have those things available where we can get all the things we need from non-animal products.
I say that makes a big difference between us and octopuses eating fish, not to mention the fact that as far as we know, octopuses are not capable of understanding ethics like us, which also makes a big difference (if it were unethical for the octopus to eat fish, which it isn't since it needs it to survive). Just like we don't blame a human baby for unethical behaviour, but still hold ourself up to ethical scrutiny.
Err, isn't the former up to actual ethics, which vary from place to place? Where do these "one size fits all" eating ethics come into place?
The article comes from a particular background. From said background, the espousal of "unethical" is understandable.
Whether you consider the ingestion of octopus to be unethical or not depends entirely on your own definition of ethics.
That cannot possibly be true if ethics is based on what causes suffering / well-being.
I'm fairly confident that many more unethical actions, even subjectively defined (i.e. from each individual observer's pov), are the result of ignorance and apathy than actual differences of opinion regarding ethics.
At best, it takes those things, along with many others, into account (and usually from the side of a specific community, not across the board).
Specific ethics have been adhered that caused tons of suffering to people (The Spanish Inquisition was a protector and enforcer of certain ethics, for example. Homophobia was also based on ethics, and when slavery was a thing in the US, it was totally compatible with the Southern ethics at the time -- you could be a well respected gentleman considered totally ethical and own 1000s of slaves -- that you also beat to work and so on).
Ehh, where we've landed in contemporary, normative-esque based ethics, it kind of is. Where you think ethics gets its imperative force depends largely (as you mentioned) on your community and environment. Western philosophy has however been shaped enough by utilitarianism, consequentialism, deontology, virtue ethics, etc., to the point that they all to a degree recognize suffering and/or the need to reduce it.
Peter Singer's summary of WH Leckly's 'ever expanding circle of responsibility' is a good example of this.
'"...Lecky wrote of human concern as an expanding circle which begins with the individual, then embraces the family and ‘soon the circle... includes first a class, then a nation, then a coalition of nations, then all humanity, and finally, its influence is felt in the dealings of man [sic] with the animal world."' -- https://www.utilitarian.net/singer/by/199704--.htm
Singer suggests that "Our century is the first in which it has been possible to speak of global responsibility and a global community." If an ever expanding circle of responsibility includes reducing suffering on a global level-- and sentience being the compelling criteria that it is-- including animal suffering vs. human culinary pleasure/preference will definitely continue to be relevant in any ethical/philosophic discussions moving forward.
It's interesting that one of the logical ends to reducing suffering as much as possible ultimately leads to expanding the circle of responsibility to future generation and those not yet alive to even suffer. This is where environmentalism and regard for those ahead of our decisions comes into play.
Maybe you're right that ethics isn't entirely based on suffering / well-being, but that's largely where it is headed.
Well, I'd say adjusted/evolved culturally/historically to help steer communities, improve/constrain certain societal aspects, but yes, it's not like they are physical laws.
Ethics are commonly a "system of moral principles", said system and principles being the reasoning behind ethics.
I'm assuming what you are trying to say is that "ethics are not absolute", which has strong arguments; however, I think the critique of the use of "unethical" is partially in agreement with my assumption of your first point ("ethics are not absolute"). Assuming ethics are not absolute, then labeling something as unethical in a blanket statement would not always hold true.
I would suggest simply prefacing the statement with "I/many believe" would sit more comfortably.
While scientists claiming that farming octopuses is damaging to the environment falls within reasonable scope of their work and expertise, them claiming that it is unethical may not be so, yet the author is lumping both together in the same introductory sentence.
Yes.
At a minimum, they shouldn't state their "own opinion from their own ethical context" as some kind of universal fact: "it's not only deeply unethical (...) scientists say".
The mere fact that there is wide disagreement about some ethical questions doesn't help the argument (as some people think), because there are all sorts of very controversial questions where it's still commonly accepted that these questions have a correct answer.
I agree that maybe most people believe in objective morality, but moral relativism exists and I don't think that it's so unpopular that it's insignificant.
No, the vast majority of people don't think there's a singular set of correct ethics, and especially not one where "eating octopus is unethical" is a tenet.
The moral system is unrelated to their scientific advice.
It also doesn't cover the "don't eat X animals" part, as even for their society (e.g. USA) that's debatable ethically, and not something the generally acceptable moral system holds.
Pluralism is unstoppable, but so is our instinct to create/defend/assemble a common ethic.
Yes, but we ourselves think it -- e.g. we extend our ethics to everybody.
Others think such legislation is ethical, and consider us unethical, corrupt, etc (e.g. Saudi Arabia).
Many people in America eat cows, while they are considered sacred in Hinduism.
> […] Numerous videos on the internet of octopuses escaping from their tanks or stealing fishermen's catches have fuelled a human fascination with the only invertebrate that the 2012 Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness considers sentient alongside mammals and birds.
Mammals and birds, I hope everyone read that.
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People are going against my comment thinking I am on the wrong side of the argument. And I feel like explaining my point of view even further will just increase the anger in the people that already expressed their counter arguments below. We will see if the public agrees with the thesis in this article and changes their eating habits to protect one of the hundreds of animals that are also considered sentient.
I'm not convinced these two things are mutually exclusive. I'd even guess that social norms are most often spurred to change by people who start the conversation about the flawed "ethics" of a given social norm.
Unless you believe ethics is given from some sort of higher authority, ethics is dictated by the number of people sharing a belief.
My personal belief is that we have a responsibility for all species on our planet (as the most intelligent, evolved, smart, etc of them). Even if everyone believes except 1 person that does not make their argument less or our argument more valid. Purely from an ethical perspective.
Let's at least be honest about our moral/ethical frameworks. They are useful for social cohesiveness, peace and order. But they're still just made up.
I don't have time for a complete response, but as an expert in this field (ethics) I feel compelled to let you know that nearly every professional philosopher (particularly in ethics) disagrees with this position.
Ethics is not simply whatever the majority says it is. You're not going to get anyone in ethics (including those who think ethics are in some sense "made up") to sign off on that.
>You're not going to get anyone in ethics
Isn't this exactly an argument supporting collective position ?
So you are (at least partially) defining ethics by the consensus of people (in your case professional philosophers).
Even in pure mathematics, which is considered to be among the most rigorous of fields, a whole lot depends on consensus about axioms and consensus about what is a valid proof.
Yes, I agree there are logical principles for determining ethical actions given a set of ethical axioms, but however, the ethical axioms themselves, and indeed the logical principles, are determined by consensus.
I am not. I'm saying that people on HN make some very hasty assumptions about ethics (e.g. the claim made in the parent comment) that ethicists broadly agree are deeply misguided. I'm hoping to encourage a little more caution. Ethics are not defined by what professional philosophers agree on, but professional philosophers are in a good position to point out when lay comments are making simple mistakes in their reasoning. This is such a case.
Of course that becomes wrong if many humans embrace the idea that minimizing suffering for animals is a good thing. At that point you would also be increasing the humans' "moral/ethical pleasure" in a kind of self fulfilling way. But there's no reason for this to happen except human hubris.
You're mistaking ethics as a branch of philosophy for norms dictated by society.
But empirically speaking, almost all people would agree at a high-level that minimizing suffering is an agreeable axiom.
Yes, they would, but there is a weighting based on the perceived status of the animal. Otherwise we would feel compelled to destroy all carnivores, since a single carnivore can kill many, many prey throughout its lifetime. We agree that the utility a lion gets from eating a dozen zebras is greater than the suffering of those zebras. Also, note that predators, do not just kill strictly what they need for food(biggest example is housecats, though other examples include wolves killing elk https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2016/03/160325-wolf-...).
Similarly, humans have a weighting function. Many people think that the utility/pleasure that a human gets from eating octopuses is greater than the suffering of those octopuses.
There are lots of experiences that feel "delicious," but that doesn't make it moral to rip that experience for yourself out of the flesh of a sentient being. Maybe you consider cephalopods potentially sentient or maybe you don't, but the argument is "It's immoral to eat them because they can have thoughts and an internal experience, just like us," and "But they taste good" is not a counterargument.
> and millions of other people
That is also not any kind of an ethical defense of one's behavior.
> don’t feel any affection towards these cephalopods makes the argument of “farming octopuses is unethical […]” less agreeable.
One thing about logical reasoning - it doesn't really matter how "agreeable" its conclusion feels.
There is an implied "We are on top of the food chain" along with "they taste good".
There is some legitimacy to the idea that we should eat whatever we please because we are the apex predator. Ultimately market forces should align the price to equal the cost of framing / hunting. Additionally we have huge ethical problems in how humans treat each other we should work on before even worrying about an invertebrate's problems.
I don't actually hold those worldviews, but they are implied with the sentence "but they taste good"
It's more like it's definitional of an apex predator that it eats what it pleases. It isn't a question of legitimacy.
Many men are strong enough to forcibly overpower many women and therefore there is some legitimacy to the idea that they should rape whoever they please.
Might does not make right.
The deep patterns of thinking underlying the mistreatment of humans and the mistreatment of other animals are the same to a large extent. It just needs contemplation to get to that.
To be specific to this particular issue, an example narrative to counter yours would be that the view of a single life and suffering is not taking into context the greater cycle of life in which we will be eaten by bacteria and in which a Jainist might find being eaten by a tiger a beautiful thing. We are base primates and are not so separate from the ecosystem and our drives as we'd like to believe. Now this is just an example of a reasoned counter argument that could possible underlie the collective subconsciously of the "millions", and isn't necessarily my own reasoning.
The same doesn't necessarily apply to less intelligent animals which might be perfectly fine with their captive conditions and don't requrie as much attention, so I think the argument is perfectly defensible.
Like, I get the argument that the authors (who are largely white and probably didn't grow up eating cephalopods unlike in other cultures; honestly the article is a bit tone-deaf in this respect) don't care for the loss of eating octopus but their argument that this is unsustainable and counterproductive is based on assuming current levels of biotechnology. Canada has already permitted GMO salmon, and Canadian consumers seem to have have forgotten about that.
Edit: I was never very keen on trying it and the one time I did I was rather ill for a couple of days after.
Edit2: I've since learned how smart they are so I wouldn't dream of eating one again.
Your comment is so judgmental and racial biased that can only be called racist. In addition you make several race identity assumptions on the authors and food and cultures based on mere prejudices.
By the way white cultures (whatever you imagine here because there is no such thing) also have cephalopod and seafood and roots or fermented foods. And not even just occasional. And even if there weren’t it would still not invalidate the article since in the current age we eat an incredible diverse diet.