Pescetarianism

Pescetarianism is a dietary choice, in which a person &mdash; known as a pescetarian &mdash; will not eat the flesh of any animals other than types of seafood. Other animal products like eggs and dairy may be part of a pescetarian diet. Pescetarianism is the chosen diet of some people for various reasons; most commonly cited are health benefits. Terms like pescevegetarianism and pesco-vegetarianism are sometimes used to describe pescetarianism, to emphasize that most pescetarians eat vegetables in addition to seafood. These terms are controversial because they imply that pescetarianism is a type of vegetarianism, a subject on which there is not consensus.

Health benefits
One of the most commonly cited reasons is that of health, based on findings that red meat is detrimental to health in many cases due to non-lean red meats containing high amounts of saturated fats. Furthermore, eating certain kinds of fish raises HDL levels, and some fish are a convenient source of omega-3 fatty acids, and have numerous health benefits in one food variety. Some health websites also state that pescetarianism lifestyle is a more healthy diet than vegetarian and vegan ones.

It can be claimed conversely that fish also contain toxins such as mercury and PCBs, though a careful selection of fish can ensure a low-risk or toxin-free product.

Differentiating Seafood from Other Animal Food Sources
Pescatarianism implies that seafood is acceptable to consume while land-dwelling animals are not. Generally these arguments fall into two categories: the ethics of slaughtering and consuming animals don't apply to sea-dwelling creatures, or the environmental ethics of sea-dwelling creatures is acceptable.

Some pescetarians are, for purely visceral reasons, disgusted by the consumption of mammals and birds yet not seafood. This can carry even to the point of avoiding sexual partners who eat mammals and birds, according to a study conducted by the New Zealand Centre for Human and Animal Studies.

Ability to feel pain
Some pescatarians believe that eating mammals and birds is unethical but eating fish is not, often arising from studies demonstrating that some or all of the creatures composing a seafood diet do not feel pain

Environmental Ethics
Some pescetarians view red meat as an inefficient food source. Most cattle, pork and chickens that supply the United States meat market are not free range. Instead, they are fed grains that are grown for the sole purpose of animal feed. The amount of calories in the grain needed to feed a cow, pig, or chicken (to a lesser extent) greatly exceeds the nutritional value of the meat these animals provide. Were this grain to be used for human consumption instead, far more food could be provided. Considerations of overpopulation and the restricted amount of arable land usually play a role in this pescetarian rationale. This view is complicated by the fact that farming carnivorous fish species requires large inputs of wild fish for feed. Demand for "wild caught" fish may reflect this concern as well as a broader ethical position of rejecting the farming of animals, and the perceived health benefit of avoiding farmed varieties of some species such as salmon. Many pescetarians therefore choose only wild caught fish, or use guides such as the Monterey Bay Aquarium's Seafood WATCH to evaluate the practices of fisheries.

A 2006 report by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations estimates that livestock are responsible for roughly 18 percent of the global warming effect, outstripping even the contribution of transportation. The main greenhouse gases produced by livestock are methane — the natural result of bovine digestion — and the nitrogen emitted by manure. Furthermore, the deforestation needed for grazing lands also contributes to global warming, by eliminating the CO2 sinks that forests provide. Thus some pescetarians choose their diet in an attempt to reduce "livestock's long shadow." .

Comparisons to other diets
Pescetarianism is similar to a traditional Mediterranean diet, which focuses on seafood, grains, fruits, and vegetables. However, the Mediterranean diet does not entirely exclude meat from land animals as pescetarianism does. While pescetarians and vegetarians often cite similar reasons in selecting their dietary choices, pescetarianism is not a type of vegetarian diet. Vegetarians do not consume the flesh of any animal, including sea animals; any diet that includes fish or other sea animals is not a vegetarian diet. However, since pescetarians do not eat mammal-meat or bird-meat, they experience many of the same social pressures as vegetarians, so that the two groups may sometimes have common interests. Occasionally -- and controversially -- terms such as pesco-vegetarian and semi-vegetarian have been used in place of the term pescetarian.

While both groups often cite environmental issues as a rationale behind their diets, pescetarian and vegetarian diets can be each environmentally unfriendly if precautions are not taken, due to the problems of overfishing, by-catch and in both diets, habitat destruction through arable farming. For this reason, some pescetarians focus on eating species that are most sustainably fished and avoid many farmed fish (e.g. salmon).

Terminology
The root of pesco- is ultimately from piscis the Latin for fish. However, the vowel e suggests that it has been taken via other Romance languages such as Spanish (pescado) or Italian (pesce). The reason for this seems obvious to English speakers - if they were called piscatarians people might get the wrong idea!

As of August 2004, "pescatarian," "pescotarian," and "piscatarian" could be found on the Internet, but "pescetarian" was perhaps the most popular (while Italian pesce is pronounced, the English term is usually pronounced with a hard "c.") As of May 2007, the term "pectarian" could also be found on the Internet. "Pescavore" is also quite common, formed by analogy with "carnivore" (though the more regular word piscivore already existed). Less commonly used terms found include "aquatarian," which has recently gained popularity in Washington, DC, and "fishetarian," which  was used in print as early as 1992, and "vegequarian."