This program, active in over 70 countries, empowers young people to engage in projects that benefit animals, people, and the environment, fostering a sense of hope and action against environmental challenges.

Goodall emphasizes the importance of individual actions, stating that billions of small, ethical actions can lead to significant change.

Her approach to conservation is holistic, focusing on the interconnectedness of humans, animals, and the environment.

Goodall's influence extends to media, with the Apple TV+ series "Jane," which aims to inspire children to care for endangered species and the environment, drawing from Goodall's teachings.

She also remains a vocal advocate for hope in the face of climate change, arguing that while challenges are significant, there is still time to make a difference if people take action.

Moreover, Goodall's collaboration with Mattel to create a Barbie doll in her likeness aims to inspire young girls to be curious and explore the world, reinforcing her legacy of encouraging the next generation to engage with nature and conservation.

This program, active in over 70 countries, empowers young people to engage in projects that benefit animals, people, and the environment, fostering a sense of hope and action against environmental challenges.

Title:

Content: World-famous for her research with chimpanzees, Jane Goodall now focuses on the human condition

Apr 21, 2024 | 0 comments

By Michelle Cohan

In 1960, on the banks of Lake Tanganyika, Tanzania, one young British woman would set out to change what we know about primates forever.

Jane Goodall, in 1960, searching an African forest for chimpanzees.

Jane Goodall defied conventional scientific methods by immersing herself in the jungle, which led to groundbreaking discoveries about chimpanzees; most notably that they use tools, are omnivores and that they are socially complex beings.

More than six decades later, her unorthodox field work – and her conservation efforts – are still celebrated around the world.

Today, the recently-turned 90-year-old’s work looks a little different – taking place mostly indoors, and with a different crowd. Through her program called “Roots & Shoots,” Goodall empowers young people to create change within their communities. And for her, this work is just as significant.

CNN spoke with Goodall recently during a trip to South Africa, where she observed some of the projects local Johannesburg students are heading up as part of Roots & Shoots.

The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

CNN: The younger generation has so much they can learn from elders. Who made an impact on your life?

Goodall: I think it’s really important, this exchange of information from the elders to the youngers. I was really lucky; I had an amazing mother. I was born loving animals, and she supported that love of animals. I was one-and-a-half years old, and she came into my room and she found I’d taken a whole handful of wriggling earthworms into my bed. Most mothers would’ve [said], ‘Oh, throw these dirty things [away].’ She just said, ‘Jane, I think they might die without the Earth, you better take them into the garden.’ And so she nurtured this inherent love I had … in all the insects, the birds, the animals, everybody around me.

Jane Goodall

CNN: Roots & Shoots is active in 70 countries, where hundreds of thousands of young people are making an impact within their communities. How did the program come about?

Goodall: When I began Roots & Shoots in Tanzania in 1991, it was because I was meeting young people then who had lost hope. Young people who felt we’d compromised their future. And the reason they’re losing hope, it’s obvious: climate change, loss of biodiversity. I could go on listing, listing, listing … but when they said there was nothing they could do about it, then I thought, ‘No, that’s not true.’

We worked out that Roots & Shoots’ main message [would be that] every individual has a role to play. And that we needed to think holistically in terms of helping the environment, people and animals, because we are all interrelated. That’s where it began.

CNN: What is the most important message to convey to the younger generation?

Goodall: The goal that I have is helping young people understand that there is a window of time [to save the planet]. Unfortunately, today I [still] meet more and more people who are losing hope. So many people feel helpless and hopeless because [they question] what can they can do as an individual.

But what people have to understand is when it’s 2 million, 1 billion, 2 billion, 3 billion, all taking small actions to make the world a better place, that is changing the world. What matters is people understanding that as an individual, what they do makes a difference. Not because it’s just them, but because they are not alone.

CNN: Does climate innovation and technology give you hope?

Goodall: Yeah, I think that if we look around at what’s happening to the planet, we need to grab onto every single thing we can that will help us to move forward out of the disaster that we have created. And if we look at solar energy, if we look at wind energy and the power of tide energy, then these things are good.

The problem has been to get government support. So governments tend to put money into the fossil fuel industry, rather than to support the new emerging technologies that will enable us to live in a more harmonious way with the natural world. If we don’t do that, our future is doomed. And unfortunately, it’s not only our future, but so many of the other animals that so many of us love. We have to take action now.

CNN: What message do you have for the world?

Goodall: A message to the world would be, don’t forget that you as an individual make an impact on the environment every single day. And it’s up to you to choose what sort of impact you make. I think once everybody understands the role that they play, whoever they are, is so desperately important, then we move towards a better world.

Editor’s note: At one of Goodall’s recent presentations in California, 93-year-old movie actor and director Clint Eastwood was in the audience. Asked why he was there, Eastwood said he supported Goodall’s work and added that he was a big fan of 90-year-olds.
_________________

Credit: CNN

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What will decrease anxiety according to Dr. Goodall?

young people working together on conservation projects

What would letting children get close to nature help cultivate?

Goodall emphasizes the importance of individual actions, stating that billions of small, ethical actions can lead to significant change.

Title:

Content: Jane Goodall wants University of Wisconsin-Madison students to walk away with one message Sunday: Do not give up hope.

It’s a strategy the world-renowned ethologist and conservationist has found effective in spurring action, even as headlines catastrophizing climate change inundate people with a sense of doom.

“I don't agree with scientists who say the tipping point has already reached the point of no return with climate change and loss of biodiversity,” Goodall told the Cap Times. “We still have a window of time. But if we lose hope, fall into apathy and don't take action, then we're doomed.”

Goodall is best known for her groundbreaking work in the early ‘60s as a primatologist. At 26, she began studying chimpanzees in Tanzania, becoming the first to observe that the animals make and use tools. Now part of the world’s longest-running study of wild chimpanzees, her findings have forever changed scientific understanding of primates and humans’ relationship to them.

Goodall’s legacy also endures through her activism. In 1977, she founded the Jane Goodall Institute, a global conservation nonprofit. One of the organization’s programs, Roots & Shoots, educates young people in over 60 countries to work on environmental, conservation and humanitarian issues.

In 2021, Goodall additionally published “The Book of Hope: A Survival Guide for Trying Times,” which details her hope in the world’s ability to make change despite its environmental challenges.

Goodall will speak Sunday at 7 p.m. in UW-Madison’s Memorial Union for the Wisconsin Union’s Distinguished Lecture Series. Tickets for the event sold out among students within 90 minutes, but the public can still register to watch the online livestream.

In a virtual interview with the Cap Times, Goodall spoke from the Edgewater Hotel about climate deniers, how she remains optimistic and what the audience can expect from her on Sunday.

Will you have time to explore Madison this weekend, or will you mostly be working?

It’s all working. Not mostly — all. But the hotel has a lovely view overlooking the lake with all the ice. My life turns out to be work, meeting lovely people and just having an occasional moment to walk in a bit of nature.

What can people expect to learn from you on Sunday?

I hope they take away the message that every single one of them makes a difference every single day of their lives, and they can choose what sort of difference they make. I think that’s the most important message that anybody can have — that they, as an individual, matter and have a role to play.

Your platform revolves around this message of hope. What might be the harm in catastrophizing?

It makes people lose hope. If you’re told that nothing you can do will avert the planet heating up to a point where life is no longer possible and that we’re destroying the ecosystems on which we depend, then why bother doing anything?

The important thing is to realize we still have time, but we have to take action. We have to each do our bit. It may seem small, but billions of small, ethical actions make change.

Much of your work focuses on involving young people within conservation efforts. What inspires you about the attitudes of younger generations toward animals and the environment?

They are much more aware, which isn’t surprising. When I was young, "environmentalism" wasn’t even a word.

Young people are surrounded by doom and gloom. The radio’s full of it, the internet's full of it, the television's full of it, the press is full of it, and so they're much more aware. Fortunately, there are enough people saying it's not too late, and that inspires them and galvanizes them into action.

Do you think those attitudes are much different from older generations?

They are different because older generations either didn't understand what was happening because of ignorance, or they don't want to understand because they want to carry on with business as usual. They want to go on making money in the short term at the expense of future generations.

Sometimes I don’t think they’re thinking like that. I don't think they're deliberately understanding that they're harming the future for their children and grandchildren. But they're simply not thinking in the way that we should be thinking today.

Is it still worth trying to change their minds?

Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes! How to change the minds of the older people? Through storytelling, not through pointing fingers, not through making people angry, not by telling them they're bad, but by reaching into the heart. I’ll give you one example.

This CEO of a huge international corporation told me he was working to get his company ethical for three reasons. One, because we're using our nature's finite natural resources faster than nature can replenish them. Second, consumer pressure — people are beginning to demand ethically produced products.

But what really tipped the balance, he said, was his little girl of 8. She came back from school one day and said, “Daddy, they're telling me that what you're doing is hurting the planet. That's not true, is it, Daddy? Because it's my planet.” That reached his heart. That's the way you change people.

When did you realize this approach of storytelling could persuade people?

I think it was probably part of my nature. I'm not confrontational. I'm fighting for change, yes, but not by confronting. People must change from within. I don't believe you can change them by hammering them with facts that they don't want to listen to.

When I first went to the medical research labs where the scientists kept chimps in 5-foot by 5-foot cages, it was one of the worst experiences of my life. I came out shaken, trying not to cry. I was taken into a room with the top people from the National Institute of Health in the department of animal experimentation. I realized they were waiting for me to speak.

I said, “I imagine all of you are caring and compassionate people, and maybe feel just as I did about what's going on in there.” When you think of it, that was very clever. They couldn’t admit they weren’t caring and compassionate, could they?

Instead of telling them they were bad people, I showed them pictures of the chimpanzees in the wild, making their nests, playing, lying around. In their minds, they could contrast it with the cages where these very social beings were kept for 30 to 40 years. I know it did get into some of their hearts because they told me so. It made some labs completely change the way that they operated.

When you meet somebody, or a group of people, you may not realize that you've made a difference — but you may have planted seeds that will grow and cause change in some of the hearts.

What mistakes did you make early on in your career that emerging activists and young people can learn from?

I was saved from making mistakes in the early days. Before I went to Africa to study chimps, I was working at London Zoo. The chimps were in terrible conditions. So when I got back from my first stint in Africa, the zoo arranged a press conference. I thought now I could really tell the world how bad the chimps were treated!

I happened to be having dinner that night with a very powerful man that I met in Tanzania, and I told him about my plan with great excitement. There was dead silence. He said, “Do you realize that the head of the London Zoo is Solly Zuckerman, Winston Churchill's wartime adviser? A very, very powerful man. Do you think he's going to take it lying down when you criticize his zoo?”

He said, “Just tell me three things that are the most important to change.” I told him, and within two weeks, they were all done. There was no confrontation. That was a lesson that came just in time for me not to make that mistake.

So it’s about activists getting rid of their own personal egos.

Exactly. What people want is to have their name out there and to say, “I did it. I changed this.” It’s learning to not want to be recognized for change. The main thing is to make the change. Not “me” making the change.

This powerful man obviously didn't want me to say that the chimps were being treated badly. He immediately agreed, but didn’t want it out in the press. Give Solly Zuckerman the credit. That’s fine — as long as it changes.

This is a lesson I talk about with our youth. I tell them not to be confrontational. Your goal: Is it to glorify yourself? To be the champion? Or do you really want change?

What do people still not understand about your work and its relevance today?

Climate change deniers, people who don’t want to make a difference, probably don’t understand. What they really think is hard to tell. But are there really people who deny that climate change is happening? Probably not. When they admit it’s real, they say it’s natural and that it’s not manmade. Do they really believe that? I can’t believe they do — but that’s what they say. They don’t want to lose face, and making people lose face isn’t a good way to make change.

What makes you think they don’t really believe what they’re saying?

Well, I can't think of anybody with any ounce of intelligence could believe it. That's why.

How often do you come across those kinds of people?

Not very often. They tend to avoid me.

Kayla Huynh joined the Cap Times in 2021 and covers higher education. She graduated from Northwestern University with a master's degree in journalism after attending UW-Madison.

Support Kayla's work and local journalism by becoming a Cap Times member.

To comment on this story, submit a letter to the editor.

What does Dr. Goodall hope the Jane Goodall Barbie doll will encourage?

What does Dr. Goodall hope the Jane Goodall Barbie doll will encourage?

Her approach to conservation is holistic, focusing on the interconnectedness of humans, animals, and the environment.

Dr. Goodall received the Templeton Prize in 2021 for what reason?

integrating science with spirituality and compassion

Goodall's influence extends to media, with the Apple TV+ series "Jane," which aims to inspire children to care for endangered species and the environment, drawing from Goodall's teachings.

Title:

Content: ×

The work of legendary ethnobiologist, conservationist and activist Jane Goodall has already inspired people to care for endangered species and the environment for decades — but the doctor’s latest endeavor continues her work in motivating the next generation.

Apple TV+’s mission-driven children’s series “Jane” harnesses the power of TV, with Emmy-winning creator J.J. Johnson (“Endlings,” “Ghostwriter”) using Goodall’s teachings to motivate kids to take a stand for endangered species and care for the environment. “Jane,” from the Jane Goodall Institute and Johnson’s company Sinking Ship Entertainment, premiered on April 14, with 10 episodes now available on Apple TV+.

“Jane” features eager 9-year-old environmentalist Jane Garcia (Ava Louise Murchison) — who is inspired to help save the planet, following in the footsteps of her role model, Goodall — along with her friends David (Mason Blomberg) and a chimpanzee named Greybeard. Each episode focuses on a different endangered species, such as Apis mellifera (Western honey bee) and Panthera tigris (tiger). Blending live action and CGI — and featuring an epic theme song “One Step Closer” written by Diane Warren, and sung by Leona Lewis — the show depicts the friends taking a stand for the species and the environment, and getting into occasional trouble along the way. The episodes all end with the friends video-chatting with real-life animal experts, particularly highlighting women and people of color.

While Goodall’s years of dedication to great apes research and advocacy have made her a household name in the 21st century, she began her work at age 26 in 1960 studying chimpanzees. She founded the Jane Goodall Institute in 1977, which fosters research, advocacy as well as community-led conservation, and it empowers children — particularly through its youth program Roots and Shoots, which was founded in 1991.

A United Nations Messenger of Peace and a Dame Commander of the British Empire (DBE), Goodall’s research on chimpanzees in Gombe, Tanzania helped change scientists’ understanding of humans’ relationship to animals. The research continues in Tanzania through the Jane Goodall Institute Gombe Stream Research Center, and it is the world’s longest-running chimpanzee study.

Also a prolific author, Goodall has adult and children’s literary works such as “The Book of Hope,” “In the Shadow of Man” and “Rickie and Henri: A True Story.”

Goodall is no stranger to the screen, however, as the subject of dozens of films including “Chimps, So Like Us,” “Miss Goodall and the Wild Chimpanzees” and “Jane Goodall: The Hope” — as well as Brett Morgen’s 2017 Emmy-nominated documentary, also called “Jane.” While Goodall did not create this “Jane” for Apple TV+, her life’s work and teachings inspire the show’s protagonist who idolizes her, and if Goodall had not approved the show’s concept when it was in development, it would not have moved forward.

Goodall, who turned 89 earlier this month, spoke with Variety over Zoom about how she hopes “Jane” inspires the youngest generation, and what she hopes to accomplish next in her career.

How do you hope viewers, especially children, react when they see “Jane”?

I hope that it will encourage them to actually think more about endangered species — to think about the fact that if we’re not careful, many of these species will disappear. I hope it also will encourage young people to join our Roots and Shoots program, which is in 68 countries. It’s about young people choosing projects to help — animals, people and the environment — deciding what they want to do, working out what they can do, rolling up their sleeves and taking action.

So if this Jane Garcia encourages real-life activities, it’ll be great. I hope it will encourage young people to join in the effort to make this a better world, to choose projects that will help to save the environment before it’s too late.

Talk about environmental issues often creates anxiety in children and young adults, but it is still obviously important to learn about — how do you, through this show or beyond, hope to inspire the next generation without causing anxiety?

That’s my entire program Roots and Shoots, it’s all about taking action. If young people get together and work on projects, which is the same sort of thing with Sinking Ship Entertainment, then it’s all about positive change. We need to know that many species are close to extinction, but that we have to stop that from happening. And therefore we have to work together to find out ways of saving the animals that are moving toward extinction. We need to know about the doom and gloom — I talk about it all the time. But at the same time, it’s desperately important to give people hope, especially young people, because, yes, we can make a difference.

So “Jane” shows young people how they can get together and solve the “doom and gloom” effectively?

Yeah, hopefully. The goal is to try and get young people involved and taking action, and stepping on beyond that to do more. It’s young people getting really worried, but then working together with older people who are also wanting to try to save the species. So it’s a complete mixture.

How do we inspire the next generation to create change, without placing blame on children for a situation they didn’t create?

There are major problems and, yes, all sorts of things have led to unfortunate decreases in numbers of endangered species. But the whole emphasis is on working together to create change. Let’s get young people involved, talk about what can be done to make a difference and then, as I say, roll up their sleeves and work out what they can do. And taking action is going to be different with different species. And, basically, I hope that this program will have enough fun in it, as well as understanding the problem, that young people will be pushing toward saving a lot of these animals. Many animals on the very brink of extinction have been given another chance.

What’s an example of a species that was pushed toward extinction, but human intervention reversed the course?

My favorite one is that little black robin that was reduced to just two individuals, one male and one female. That was it. And through some very clever work, there are now about 500 of them. They’re all genetically identical, of course, but they’re being spread into four different islands. So, hopefully, there will be some genetic change so they’re not all identical, since that’s not very healthy. There are many, many stories like that.

What message do you have for people who feel hopeless, or that they alone cannot make a difference?

People have to realize that every single one of us can make a difference. We could just say, “Oh well, I know that animals are becoming extinct. There’s nothing I can do about it.” That’s really going to be the end of us. But if you decide, “I will try and make a difference, I will do something every single day,” then we can make a difference. We can choose what we can do: Some of us can help animals, some of us can help planting trees, some of us can help whatever it is that we care about. And if we all choose projects to make the world better, then it’s going to make a major difference. We don’t all give up and say, “Well, it’s just me, there’s nothing I can do.” If we give up, then the future is not very good, is it? We all have to do our bit to try and persuade other people. We’re in the middle of a pretty bad, dark space. So for young people to join in and feel, “Gosh, if I do this, I will be making the world a better place,” that’s really important.

You’ve done so much in your life and in your career — what else do you look forward to accomplishing?

I want our Roots and Shoots program to be in every school in every country. But I always say, “If you try and aim for the stars, you might reach the moon. If you aim for the moon, you might reach the head of Mount Everest,” for example. So that’s the same for the stars — and at least we can reach the moon and help to protect the various animals and plants that are facing tremendous danger. The young and old alike in different countries need to really, really work hard to save these creatures. We’ve got to do it now.

This interview has been edited and condensed.

What difference does Dr. Goodall believe every individual is capable of?

What does Dr. Goodall hope the the Apple TV series "Jane" will do for people?

What would letting children get close to nature help cultivate?

She also remains a vocal advocate for hope in the face of climate change, arguing that while challenges are significant, there is still time to make a difference if people take action.

At the Proctor & Gamble 2022 summit on regional sustainability, what did Dr. Jane Goodall emphasize?

What does Dr. Goodall hope the Jane Goodall Barbie doll will encourage?

Moreover, Goodall's collaboration with Mattel to create a Barbie doll in her likeness aims to inspire young girls to be curious and explore the world, reinforcing her legacy of encouraging the next generation to engage with nature and conservation.

Title:

Content: Mattel Inc.

Mattel Inc. Unveils New Barbie Doll Dedicated to Dr. Jane Goodall

Barbie, in partnership with the Jane Goodall Institute, announced the release of a new doll dedicated to the famous scientist herself.

A Jane Goodall Barbie doll has just hit the market.

It has been a longtime wish of Dr. Jane Goodall to inspire young girls.

The doll was created to celebrate Goodall's groundbreaking research with chimpanzees and her nature conservation efforts.

“My entire career, I’ve wanted to help inspire kids to be curious and explore the world around them – just like I did when I first traveled to Tanzania 62 years ago. I’m thrilled to partner with Barbie and encourage young children to learn from their environment and feel a sense that they can make a difference,” said Dr. Jane Goodall in a statement.

Goodall is well-known for her research observing chimpanzees' similar characteristics to humans. Her work has drastically changed the way we look at the behaviors of animals and humans.

This doll is the first doll in Mattel's 'Inspiring Women Series' to be made from recycled plastic.

“Kids need more role models like Dr. Jane Goodall, because imagining they can be anything is just the beginning – seeing it makes all the difference," said Lisa McKnight, Executive Vice President and Global Head of Barbie and Dolls, Mattel in a statement.

The doll comes with a chimpanzee figure named after Goodall's famous chimpanzee companion, David Greybeard. It also comes with a notebook and a pair of binoculars.

The release of the doll comes just in time for World Chimpanzee Day on July 14.

Other dolls in the 'Inspiring Women Series' include Ida B. Wells and Maya Angelou.

Contact Us

What does Dr. Goodall hope the Jane Goodall Barbie doll will encourage?

Learn from the environment
explore the world
be curious

What would letting children get close to nature help cultivate?


In 2012, he and his students at the University of Toronto developed technology that laid the foundation for modern AI systems, which Google later acquired for $44 million.

Hinton's work earned him the Turing Award in 2018, which is considered the Nobel Prize of computing.

He highlighted the risk of AI systems developing sub-goals like acquiring more power, which could lead to unintended consequences.

Hinton's resignation and warnings have drawn significant attention because of his stature in the AI community and the potential implications of his concerns.

For instance, an open letter signed by over 1,000 tech leaders, including Elon Musk, called for a six-month pause on AI development to address safety concerns.

Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, also expressed worries about AI's potential to cause significant harm and advocated for legislative measures to regulate AI.

These concerns are shared by a majority of Americans, with a poll revealing that 61% believe AI could be a threat to civilization.

The potential for AI to disrupt jobs, spread misinformation, and be used in autonomous weapons are some of the concerns that experts like Hinton have raised.

The debate around AI emphasizes the need for responsible development and regulation to ensure that its benefits are realized without compromising safety and ethical standards.

In 2012, he and his students at the University of Toronto developed technology that laid the foundation for modern AI systems, which Google later acquired for $44 million.

Title:

Content: The ‘Godfather of AI’ warns about potential dangers of the technology as he quits Google

British-Canadian computer scientist Geoffrey Hinton admits he has fears for the future of AI

In a Frankenstein-esque tale of maker and master, Geoffrey Hinton, 75, dubbed ‘the godfather of AI’, has left Google with a parting warning over the dangers of artificial intelligence.

In 2012, the British-Canadian computer scientist invented technology with two students at University of Toronto that would become the intellectual foundation for AI systems. Google purchased the rights to this neural network tech to the tune of $44 million, which also propelled Dr Hinton to receive the Turing Award in 2018, considered the Nobel Prize of computing.

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Yet now, Dr Hinton has packed in the day job at Google to join a chorus of anxious experts demanding a rollback of AI research until more robust safety measures are designed and deployed. Dr Hinton told the BBC: ‘Right now, they’re not more intelligent than us, as far as I can tell. But I think they soon may be.’

While many look upon AI as a natural technological development akin to the internet that could lead to exciting breakthroughs for humanity, there are growing fears that AI is a Pandora’s box. Reflecting on the effects of his work, Dr Hinton said: ‘I console myself with the normal excuse: If I hadn’t done it, somebody would have,’ as he admitted, ‘it is hard to see how you can prevent the bad actors from using it for bad things.’

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The scientist went on to warn that AI could be taught to ‘create sub-goals like “I need to get more power”’, and be harnessed by nefarious actors to wreak havoc. With innovation driven forward by the unstoppable competition between behemoths like Google and Microsoft, Dr Hinton warned innovation will only increase exponentially in the coming years.

There are those who are trying to apply the brakes to this runaway train. In March, an open letter was signed by over 1,000 tech leaders and researchers, including Elon Musk and fellow Turing Award winner Yoshu Bengio, calling for a six-month moratorium on AI development. A few days later, 19 leaders of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence released their own letter on the risks of AI. The signatures included that of Eric Horvitz, chief scientific officer at Microsoft.

The main outcry over AI lies in its ability to create and disseminate false news and images, which the public may find increasingly hard to identify. AI also poses a threat to academia and careers (see: Tatler’s foray into the world of ChatGPT). Dr Hinton believes that AI will fundamentally disrupt the workplace and take over the ‘drudge work’.

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However Google’s chief scientist, Jeff Dean, offered words of comfort, adding: 'We remain committed to a responsible approach to AI. We’re continually learning to understand emerging risks while also innovating boldly.’

Hinton's work earned him the Turing Award in 2018, which is considered the Nobel Prize of computing.

Which prestigious award did Hinton receive in 2018 for his work on neural networks?

He highlighted the risk of AI systems developing sub-goals like acquiring more power, which could lead to unintended consequences.

What did Hinton, the renowned British-Canadian expert reveal about AI that caused widespread concern?

Exposed serious AI risks, shocking the tech world and affecting major company stocks.

What did Sam Altman admit about ChatGPT and the potential risks of AI?

Advanced AI could pose an existential risk to humanity.

What does Hinton warn could happen to AI if companies and regulators fail to implement effective rules and controls?

Becomes uncontrollable
Poses ethical risks

Hinton's resignation and warnings have drawn significant attention because of his stature in the AI community and the potential implications of his concerns.

What did Hinton, the renowned British-Canadian expert reveal about AI that caused widespread concern?

Exposed serious AI risks, shocking the tech world and affecting major company stocks.

For instance, an open letter signed by over 1,000 tech leaders, including Elon Musk, called for a six-month pause on AI development to address safety concerns.

Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, also expressed worries about AI's potential to cause significant harm and advocated for legislative measures to regulate AI.

Title:

Content: Mark Woods: Is orange the color of progress on Jacksonville riverfront? Let's hope so.
GUEST

Retired engineering dean: Urgent steps needed to mitigate catastrophic potential of AI

Dr. Suresh Chandra
Guest columnist

In historical terms, not many topics have attracted as much attention as artificial intelligence has in the past year. Catastrophic predictions by experts in this revolutionary field have propelled them to urge governments and technology corporations to urgently put in place regulations and guidelines to ensure that pernicious effects of AI are avoided.

Geoffrey Hinton, “the godfather of AI,” recently made headlines as he left Google after a long association so he could sound the alarm about AI’s ability to outsmart humans and spawn devastating problems for mankind’s existence. Sam Altman, CEO of ChatGPT maker OpenAI, appeared before the U. S. Congress in May and articulated the same concern. He has recently embarked on a whirlwind tour of Asian and European countries to share his anxiety regarding AI and recommend urgent action in his meetings with political and technical leaders there.

Altman is one of the dozens of top experts and industry leaders to warn about the existential threat to humanity presented by AI in the next five to 10 years. They strongly feel that “mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war.”

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This also reflects the view of a large number of participants in the Yale CEO Summit in June.

In May top U.S. and European officials met in Sweden to discuss oversight of AI and pledged to help establish voluntary codes of conduct. The European Union plans to place new requirements on high-risk AI in socioeconomic processes, the government use of AI and the regulated consumer products with AI systems.

Unfortunately the U. S. Congress, despite dire warnings, has been reluctant to come up with needed legislation for fear of alienating key corporations. Not surprisingly, some prominent U.S. corporations have expressed reservations about the drastic steps that the European Union has decided to implement.

The rise of AI has led many economists to issue stern warnings regarding our labor market. As many as 300 million jobs around the world could eventually be automated, according to Goldman Sachs. Some 14 million positions could disappear in the next five years alone. Even the jobs that survive will quite possibly not look much like the jobs of today.

Other potentially harmful outcomes include social surveillance (gathering data on citizens’ activities, relationships and political views), widening socioeconomic inequality, autonomous weapons powered by AI, financial crises brought about by AI algorithms and ransom/extortion threats through manipulation of voice and photos.

The beneficial impact of AI technology in the past decade is manifest in smartphone photos; facial recognition software; numerous medical applications, such as analyzing MRI scans, spotting lung cancer or managing mental health issues; understanding by farmers of crop yields; popular apps like Google Maps; use of speech recognition to translate words from one language to another; advances in social networks (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Amazon’s Alexa, Apple’s Siri and Google Assistant); and creating musical compositions or paintings.

Inevitably, AI technology is expected to bring more opportunities in jobs and industries that weren’t previously possible. Thus, one of the most promising aspects of AI is expected to be our entry into a golden age of human possibility, technological development and economic growth.

The above-stated amazing AI-related progress notwithstanding, the potential for destruction of the societal structure is a grave threat and must be avoided. It is imperative that the world develop national and international regulations for AI without delay. The creation of organizational standards for applying AI, making it part of company culture and discussions — as well as infusing humanities perspectives in technology development — are part of this all-important process.

Suresh Chandra, Ph.D., is professor emeritus and former dean of the College of Engineering at North Carolina A&T State University. He lives in Ponte Vedra.

This guest column is the opinion of the author and does not necessarily represent the views of the Times-Union. We welcome a diversity of opinions.

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Content: More Than Half of Americans Think AI Poses a Threat to Humanity

AI is the talk of the town these days. But despite the technology’s impressive accomplishments—or perhaps because of them—not all of that talk is positive. There was a New York Times tech columnist’s piece about his unsettling interaction with ChatGPT in February; an open letter calling for a moratorium on AI research in March; “godfather of AI” Geoffrey Hinton’s dramatic resignation from Google and warning about the dangers of AI; and just this week, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s testimony before Congress, in which he said his “worst fear is we cause significant harm to the world” and encouraged legislation around the technology (though he also argued that generative AI should be treated differently, which would be convenient for his company).

It seems these warnings (along with all the other media circulating on the topic) have reached the American public loud and clear, and people don’t quite know what to think—but many are getting nervous. A poll carried out last week by Reuters revealed that more than half of Americans believe AI poses a threat to humanity’s future.

The poll was conducted online between May 9 and May 15, with 4,415 adults participating, and the results were published yesterday. More than two-thirds of respondents expressed concern about possible negative impacts of AI, while 61 percent believe it could be a threat to civilization.

“It’s telling such a broad swatch of Americans worry about the negative effects of AI,” said Landon Klein, director of US policy at the Future of Life Institute, the organization behind the previously mentioned open letter. “We view the current moment similar to the beginning of the nuclear era, and we have the benefit of public perception that is consistent with the need to take action.”

One nebulous aspect of the poll, and of many of the headlines about AI we see on a daily basis, is how the technology is defined. What are we referring to when we say “AI”? The term encompasses everything from recommendation algorithms that serve up content on YouTube and Netflix, to large language models like ChatGPT, to models that can design incredibly complex protein architectures, to the Siri assistant built into many iPhones.

IBM’s definition is simple: “a field which combines computer science and robust datasets to enable problem-solving.” Google, meanwhile, defines it as “a set of technologies that enable computers to perform a variety of advanced functions, including the ability to see, understand and translate spoken and written language, analyze data, make recommendations, and more.”

It could be that peoples’ fear and distrust of AI comes partly from a lack of understanding of it, and a stronger focus on unsettling examples than positive ones. The AI that can design complex proteins may help scientists discover stronger vaccines and other drugs, and could do so on a vastly accelerated timeline.

In fact, biotechnology and medicine are two fields for which AI holds enormous promise, be it by modeling millions of proteins, coming up with artificial enzymes, powering brain implants that help disabled people communicate, or helping diagnose conditions like Alzheimer’s.

Sebastian Thrun, a computer science professor at Stanford who founded Google X, pointed out that there’s not enough public awareness of the potential for positive impact AI has. “The concerns are very legitimate, but I think what’s missing in the dialogue in general is why are we doing this in the first place?” he said. “AI will raise peoples’ quality of life, and help people be more competent and more efficient.”

While 61 percent of the poll’s respondents said AI could be a risk to humanity, only 22 percent said it won’t be a risk; the other 17 percent weren’t sure.

However, the (sort of?) good news is that AI isn’t the biggest thing Americans are losing sleep over. The top worry at the moment is, unsurprisingly, the economy (82 percent of respondents fear a looming recession), with crime coming in second (77 percent said they support increasing police funding to fight crime).

If an AI solution came along that could, say, point out economic strategies humans haven’t yet thought of, would that make people less wary of it?

Given everything else the tech can do, this doesn’t seem like such a long shot.

Image Credit: Google DeepMind / Unsplash

Vanessa Bates Ramirez
Vanessa is senior editor of Singularity Hub. She's interested in biotechnology and genetic engineering, the nitty-gritty of the renewable energy transition, the roles technology and science play in geopolitics and international development, and countless other topics.
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What did Sam Altman admit about ChatGPT and the potential risks of AI?

Advanced AI could pose an existential risk to humanity.

What did Sam Altman admit about ChatGPT and the potential risks of AI?

Advanced AI could pose an existential risk to humanity.

These concerns are shared by a majority of Americans, with a poll revealing that 61% believe AI could be a threat to civilization.

What did Sam Altman admit about ChatGPT and the potential risks of AI?

Advanced AI could pose an existential risk to humanity.

The potential for AI to disrupt jobs, spread misinformation, and be used in autonomous weapons are some of the concerns that experts like Hinton have raised.

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UK and US intervene amid AI industry’s rapid advances

Competition and Markets Authority sends ‘pre-warning’ to sector, while White House announces measures to address risks

The UK and US have intervened in the race to develop ever more powerful artificial intelligence technology, as the British competition watchdog launched a review of the sector and the White House advised tech firms of their fundamental responsibility to develop safe products.

Regulators are under mounting pressure to intervene, as the emergence of AI-powered language generators such as ChatGPT raises concerns about the potential spread of misinformation, a rise in fraud and the impact on the jobs market, with Elon Musk among nearly 30,000 signatories to a letter published last month urging a pause in significant projects.

The UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) said on Thursday it would look at the underlying systems – or foundation models – behind AI tools. The initial review, described by one legal expert as a “pre-warning” to the sector, will publish its findings in September.

On the same day, the US government announced measures to address the risks in AI development, as Kamala Harris, the vice-president, met chief executives at the forefront of the industry’s rapid advances. In a statement, the White House said firms developing the technology had a “fundamental responsibility to make sure their products are safe before they are deployed or made public”.

The meeting capped a week during which a succession of scientists and business leaders issued warnings about the speed at which the technology could disrupt established industries. On Monday, Geoffrey Hinton, the “godfather of AI”, quit Google in order to speak more freely about the technology’s dangers, while the UK government’s outgoing scientific adviser, Sir Patrick Vallance, urged ministers to “get ahead” of the profound social and economic changes that could be triggered by AI, saying the impact on jobs could be as big as that of the Industrial Revolution.

Sarah Cardell said AI had the potential to “transform” the way businesses competed, but that consumers must be protected.

The CMA chief executive said: “AI has burst into the public consciousness over the past few months but has been on our radar for some time. It’s crucial that the potential benefits of this transformative technology are readily accessible to UK businesses and consumers while people remain protected from issues like false or misleading information.”

ChatGPT and Google’s rival Bard service are prone to delivering false information in response to users’ prompts, while concerns have been raised about AI-generated voice scams. The anti-misinformation outfit NewsGuard said this week that chatbots pretending to be journalists were running almost 50 AI-generated “content farms”. Last month, a song featuring fake AI-generated vocals purporting to be Drake and the Weeknd was pulled from streaming services.

The CMA review will look at how the markets for foundation models could evolve, what opportunities and risks there are for consumers and competition, and formulate “guiding principles” to support competition and protect consumers.

The leading players in AI are Microsoft, ChatGPT developer OpenAI – in which Microsoft is an investor – and Google parent Alphabet, which owns a world-leading AI business in UK-based DeepMind, while leading AI startups include Anthropic and Stability AI, the British company behind Stable Diffusion.

Alex Haffner, competition partner at the UK law firm Fladgate, said: “Given the direction of regulatory travel at the moment and the fact the CMA is deciding to dedicate resource to this area, its announcement must be seen as some form of pre-warning about aggressive development of AI programmes without due scrutiny being applied.”

In the US, Harris met the chief executives of OpenAI, Alphabet and Microsoft at the White House, and outlined measures to address the risks of unchecked AI development. In a statement following the meeting, Harris said she told the executives that “the private sector has an ethical, moral, and legal responsibility to ensure the safety and security of their products”.

The administration said it would invest $140m (£111m) in seven new national AI research institutes, to pursue artificial intelligence advances that are “ethical, trustworthy, responsible, and serve the public good”. AI development is dominated by the private sector, with the tech industry producing 32 significant machine-learning models last year, compared with three produced by academia.

Leading AI developers have also agreed to their systems being publicly evaluated at this year’s Defcon 31 cybersecurity conference. Companies that have agreed to participate include OpenAI, Google, Microsoft and Stability AI.

“This independent exercise will provide critical information to researchers and the public about the impacts of these models,” said the White House.

Robert Weissman, the president of the consumer rights non-profit Public Citizen, praised the White House’s announcement as a “useful step” but said more aggressive action is needed. Weissman said this should including a moratorium on the deployment of new generative AI technologies, the term for tools such as ChatGPT and Stable Diffusion.

“At this point, Big Tech companies need to be saved from themselves. The companies and their top AI developers are well aware of the risks posed by generative AI. But they are in a competitive arms race and each believes themselves unable to slow down,” he said.

The EU was also told on Thursday that it must protect grassroots AI research or risk handing control of the technology’s development to US firms.

In an open letter coordinated by the German research group Laion – or Large-scale AI Open Network – the European parliament was told that one-size-fits-all rules risked eliminating open research and development.

“Rules that require a researcher or developer to monitor or control downstream use could make it impossible to release open-source AI in Europe,” which would “entrench large firms” and “hamper efforts to improve transparency, reduce competition, limit academic freedom, and drive investment in AI overseas”, the letter said.

“Europe cannot afford to lose AI sovereignty. Eliminating open-source R&D will leave the European scientific community and economy critically dependent on a handful of foreign and proprietary firms for essential AI infrastructure.”

The largest AI efforts, by companies such as OpenAI and Google, are heavily controlled by their creators. It is impossible to download the model behind ChatGPT, for instance, and the paid-for access that OpenAI provides to customers comes with a number of legal and technical restrictions on how it can be used. By contrast, open-source efforts involve creating a model and then releasing it for anyone to use, improve or adapt as they see fit.

“We are working on open-source AI because we think that sort of AI will be more safe, more accessible and more democratic,” said Christoph Schuhmann, the organisational lead at Laion.

More on this story

More on this story

  • US aims to tackle risk of uncontrolled race to develop AI

  • EU urged to protect grassroots AI research or risk losing out to US

  • UK competition watchdog launches review of AI market

  • AI ‘could be as transformative as Industrial Revolution’

  • Chatbot ‘journalists’ found running almost 50 AI-generated content farms

  • ‘Godfather of AI’ Geoffrey Hinton quits Google and warns over dangers of misinformation

  • AI has better ‘bedside manner’ than some doctors, study finds

  • Fresh concerns raised over sources of training material for AI systems

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What did Hinton, the renowned British-Canadian expert reveal about AI that caused widespread concern?

Exposed serious AI risks, shocking the tech world and affecting major company stocks.

What does Hinton warn could happen to AI if companies and regulators fail to implement effective rules and controls?

What risks did Hinton associate with AI's rapid advancement?

Job loss
Misuse in warfare
Misinformation

What did Hinton, the renowned British-Canadian expert reveal about AI that caused widespread concern?

Exposed serious AI risks, shocking the tech world and affecting major company stocks.

What does Hinton warn could happen to AI if companies and regulators fail to implement effective rules and controls?

What risks did Hinton associate with AI's rapid advancement?

Job loss
Misuse in warfare
Misinformation

The debate around AI emphasizes the need for responsible development and regulation to ensure that its benefits are realized without compromising safety and ethical standards.

What does Hinton warn could happen to AI if companies and regulators fail to implement effective rules and controls?


Common additives include fishmeal and fish oil, which are essential for providing protein and omega-3 fatty acids.

However, the use of fishmeal and fish oil raises environmental concerns due to the depletion of wild fish stocks needed to produce these ingredients.

Other additives include soy proteins, wheat gluten, and corn gluten meal, which are used to reduce reliance on fish-based ingredients and lower costs.

Vitamins and minerals are also added to ensure the nutritional adequacy of the feed.

The overuse of fishmeal and fish oil can lead to the depletion of wild fish stocks, which disrupts marine ecosystems.

Additionally, there are concerns about the accumulation of toxins such as PCBs and mercury in farmed fish, which can be a result of contaminated feed ingredients.

In Canada, for example, the use of pesticides like SLICE (emamectin benzoate) is regulated, though there are concerns about its decreasing effectiveness and the development of resistance in sea lice.

The industry is calling for the approval of new pesticide options to address these challenges.

In the European Union, there is criticism of the lack of clear sustainability indicators for aquaculture, including the use of feed additives.

Common additives include fishmeal and fish oil, which are essential for providing protein and omega-3 fatty acids.

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China Works to Get Wild-Caught Fish Out of its Aquaculture Feed

[By Zhang Chun]

A 2021 Chinese government initiative to stop aquaculture feed being made from only young or low-value fish and to instead start producing “compound feed” – mixed with ingredients harvested from the land – is opening up a greener future for the sector.

According to the Ministry of Agriculture, in a series of trials last year, the sole use of low-value “feed-grade” fish as aquaculture feed was reduced by 77 percent, and by as much as 94 percent in farming of largemouth bass. Experts say the switch to compound feed could see overall use of feed-grade fish slashed by half for farming of certain species.

What is compound feed?

Compound feed normally contains a mixture of animal- and plant-based ingredients, and added nutrients such as vitamins. For aquaculture feeds containing fishmeal and fish oil, common additives include soy proteins, wheat gluten and corn gluten meal.

Feed-grade fish are those in a catch that are small, low in commercial value, or unsuitable for human consumption. They are sent to be processed into fishmeal and fish oil, or fed directly to farmed fish. But a significant proportion of feed-grade fish consists of juveniles of commercially important species. Once caught they can no longer grow into adult fish and breed, or be caught and sold on the market. Their removal damages ocean food chains and ecosystem stability.

The last decade and more has seen increased calls for China to tackle the use of feed-grade fish in aquaculture, but the current round of trials is the first organised by the Ministry of Agriculture. It focuses on species such as the yellow croaker, Japanese sea bass and largemouth bass, which tend to be fed more feed-grade fish. While those species don’t account for much of China’s fed aquaculture output, they do require much more protein than others to put on the same amount of weight. Compound feed cuts down on the use of fish by substituting vegetable alternatives, and is cheaper.

In the long term, sustained reductions in the use of fishmeal and fish oil in feed will be necessary to protect wild fisheries.

Aquaculture driving feed-grade fish catch

Fishers never used to set out to catch feed-grade fish; it was bycatch, with no economic value. Then in the 1980s, global aquaculture took off. “There was a lot of need for fishmeal and oil,” Rashid Sumalia, a fisheries researcher at the University of British Columbia, told China Dialogue. People started going out “purposely to catch them at distance, because there was a market”, he added.

According to the Food and Agriculture Organization’s (FAO’s) 2020 global fisheries and aquaculture report, the use of fish for reduction to fishmeal and fish oil peaked in 1994 at 30 million tonnes, and stood at 18 million tonnes by 2018. Another 4 million tonnes were used elsewhere, including directly in feed for aquaculture, livestock and fur animals.

It wasn’t until the mid and late 1990s that aquaculture took off in China. The FAO’s 1998 fisheries and aquaculture report describes how rare it was for fish catches in Asia to go unused or be used as aquaculture feed. But in Asia, particularly in China and Vietnam, aquaculture has expanded rapidly and the region now accounts for almost 90 percent of global output. In China, output tripled between 1998 and 2020, to represent 60 percent of the global total.

Although many of the species farmed in China need little or no feed, fed fish and crustacean aquaculture accounts for half of output and requires millions of tonnes of feed-grade fish from Chinese waters alone. China does not currently have statistics on its feed-grade fish catch or use in fed aquaculture. One study calculated that in 2016 4.6 million tonnes of feed-grade fish were caught, 35 percent of the total recorded catch in China’s waters, and most was used directly as feed.

“The state is certainly aware of the problem,” said Fang Qing, China general manager for the Aquaculture Stewardship Council, adding that the difficulty in banning some harmful types of fishing gear in China is due to the ongoing market for the feed-grade fish it brings in. Since 2018, China has put minimum size limits in place for 15 commercial fish species, and ruled that feed-grade fish catch would drop to below 20% by 2020. There is no data available indicating whether this target was met.

This it isn’t just a Chinese problem. According to a 2017 study by the University of British Columbia, many countries, including the US and Norway, use feed-grade fish directly as feed. But the practice increased significantly in Asia between the 1990s and 2010, with feed-grade fish coming to account for a high percentage of landed catches.

Replacing feed-grade fish

In early 2019, the Ministry of Agriculture announced it would work to make Chinese aquaculture more environmentally friendly, and proposed the use of compound feed instead of purely fish-based feed. In April 2021, several provinces started trials of compound feed as part of more concrete action plans.

Compound feed for aquaculture is usually a mix of fishmeal, fish oil, wheat flour, soybean meal, vegetable oil and other land-grown ingredients. The amount of fishmeal and fish oil needed depends on the type of fish to be fed, and its stage of growth. According to Fang Qing, carnivorous fish such as the yellow croaker need huge quantities of meat protein at certain stages in their growth, and the relationship between particular nutrients and the growth and physiology of the fish can be complex. Hence, producing appropriate compound feed involves a lot of research and development.

To quantify how efficiently a species is farmed, the aquaculture industry uses a ratio called Fish in:Fish out (FIFO). The closer the FIFO is to 1, the more fish meat is produced per unit of input; a score of 1 means an extra kilogram of fish used as feed results in an extra kilogram of fish to harvest.

A study published in 2020 shows a FIFO of almost 1 for salmon and trout, thanks to the use of compound feeds which require less fishmeal and fish oil. If only fish were used to feed those species, the FIFO figure would be similar to that of the yellow croaker – over 6, according to an upcoming paper co-authored by Zhang Wenbo, an assistant professor in the College of Fisheries and Life Science at Shanghai Ocean University. His research into conventional yellow croaker aquaculture in China found that the direct use of feed-grade fish is still the best option for the yellow croaker farmers. But Fang Qing told China Dialogue that a lot of feed-grade fish fed to yellow croaker goes uneaten, and ends up sinking to the seabed or rotting, causing pollution and increasing the risk of disease.

More compound feed use would help reduce FIFO numbers in two ways: by cutting use of feed-grade fish, and by increasing conversion ratios – that is, generating more fish growth per unit of feed.

Zhejiang is taking the lead in both those areas. Since 2016, the province has been shutting fishmeal factories during the closed season and restricting the percentage of feed-grade fish in the overall catch. This, combined with the use of compound feed, saw Zhejiang cut the use of feed-grade fish by 835,000 tonnes across 710,000 mu (474 square kilometres) of aquaculture farms during the 13th FYP period (2016-2020). “Previously, feed-grade fish were the primary feed for largemouth bass in Zhejiang. These last two years that’s almost all been replaced with compound feed.” The FIFO ratio for farmed largemouth bass in Zhejiang could come down to 1.5, half the national average for this species, according to 2016 calculations Zhang Wenbo contributed to.

But cutting back on feed-grade fish use in China won’t be easy. Fishers catch a wide range of fish with a wide range of gear. At the local level there is a lack of fisher associations that can impose rules on the sector, making management tricky. Zhejiang’s success can be ascribed to strong local regulations. “There are no successful [international] examples that China can apply,” said Fang Qing. Alongside legislation to bolster oversight of the feed-grade fish catch, he also suggests developing feeds which will be more palatable to fish, and labelling products according to their use of feed-grade fish or compound feed, so consumers can make an informed choice.

Increasing the efficiency of fish inputs

The use of compound feed isn’t the end of the story. At least for now, fishmeal and fish oil are essential ingredients in those feeds. And while the global supply of fishmeal and fish oil has fallen from its peak in 2000 to a fairly stable level, the demand for aquaculture feeds has been increasing. That requires the development of feeds containing less meal and oil.

Plans announced by Norway to boost salmon farming have led to concerns about the supply of fishmeal and fish oil as well as vegetable ingredients. The country has started researching the use of mesopelagic fish (which inhabit the middle depths of the ocean), algae and farmed insects to meet that need and make feed more efficient. A more complete solution would be to develop entirely vegetarian feeds, with no fishmeal at all. However, as things stand that would only be suitable for a few species.

“Fishmeal is the most expensive of the ingredients found in bulk feeds. Reducing the amount in those feeds is the best way to make them cheaper,” Zhang Wenbo points out. A tonne of fishmeal costs around 10,000 yuan (US$1,500), compared to 1,000–4,000 yuan for bran or soybean meal, he added. “Feed conversion ratios are also affected by the type of aquaculture, the make-up of the feed, and genetic selection – the breeding of strains more suited to compound feeds,” he said. This is more difficult in China, with its wide range of farmed species, than in Norway, where salmon dominates. But progress is still being made, and associated targets have been set in the 14th Five Year Plan (2021–25).

Increasing the efficiency of fishmeal and fish oil use in China will also ease global pressures on the supply and help protect juvenile fish. China is the world’s biggest consumer of fishmeal, with the largest part being used in aquaculture, and the second largest being fed to pigs. But the country only produces 400,000–700,000 tonnes of fishmeal a year – not even close to meeting domestic demand. Fishmeal imports have held steady since 2017, at about 1.4 million tonnes, but jumped to 1.82 million tonnes in 2021, with experts ascribing the change to the recovery in pig farming. The extra fishmeal came from the Americas and elsewhere in Asia.

Zhang Wenbo explains that China’s fishmeal and fish oil imports come from forage fish, caught specifically to be turned into fishmeal, and Peru is the main supplier. Relatively little of China’s fishmeal is made from feed-grade fish. “Imports of by-product processed fishmeal from Vietnam and Thailand have been increasing in recent years,” he said.

Minimizing the feed-grade fish catch

Cutting back on the use of feed-grade fish is good for the sustainable development of both wild fishing and aquaculture. It will also help protect already vulnerable ocean ecosystems. In 1959, fishing vessels in China’s Bohai Sea caught 420 kg of fish per net for every hour they worked. By 1993, that had fallen to 30 kg, and only 8 kg between 1998 and 2011. The above-mentioned research into China’s feed-grade fish catch found that a long-term stable total catch has masked trends including falling biomass and changes in end use.

The losses to biodiversity and ecological services cannot be measured in financial terms, and the fishing industry needs more than simply output. Wang Songlin, president and founder of the Qingdao Marine Conservation Society, believes the industry needs to work towards a balance of ecological, economic and social benefits. He told China Dialogue that even if total catch may still be the same by volume, the underlying destruction to the integrity of ecosystems and the environment should not be ignored.

Management of the sector in China has acquired a new ecological focus. Alongside the use of compound feeds, some provinces are providing fishery stewardship subsidies for the protection of rare and endangered species and for keeping down feed-grade fish catch volumes.

Protecting juvenile fish isn’t just a matter for China – it’s crucial for ocean ecosystems around the world. Rashid Sumalia said: “If you look at the economies and the ecology at the higher level, you don’t want to [catch feed-grade fish] because the losses are too high” to be sustainable. Sumalia acknowledges that many people rely on that fishing for their livelihoods but says: “We need to take it down as far as we can.”

Zhang Chun is a senior researcher at China Dialogue. This article appears courtesy of China Dialogue Ocean and may be found in its original form here

The opinions expressed herein are the author's and not necessarily those of The Maritime Executive.

However, the use of fishmeal and fish oil raises environmental concerns due to the depletion of wild fish stocks needed to produce these ingredients.

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The EU must not support intensive fish farming — it's not sustainable

Free Article

The Hungarian presidency of the Council of the European Union, which will run between 1 July and 31 December 2024, has announced in its programme that it will pay particular attention to the development of “sustainable and competitive aquaculture”, arguing that “it is the animal protein production sector with the smallest environmental footprint.”

Beyond a supposedly low carbon footprint, aquaculture is also presented as an alternative to mitigate declining wild fish catches. However, under the term “aquaculture” we find various production models – some of which are more environmentally benign when conducted at appropriate scale, such as the cultivation of mussels, clams, and oysters, and some of which come with significant damaging impacts.

Many European consumers who want to eat fish from sustainable sources believe farmed salmon, trout and seabass are sustainable choices. But the intensive farming of carnivorous fin fish is neither socially nor environmentally sustainable.

The environmental impacts of this industrial production model include an increase in harmful algal blooms, a negative impact on sea grass meadows due to the accumulation of organic matter around farms, mass fish die-offs, the use of the harmful substances such as carcinogenic formaldehyde or antibiotics, and water pollution, creating dead zones on the sea bed underneath the farms. Adding to this, carnivorous farmed fish such as salmon and seabass require high volumes of fishmeal and fish oil from wild-caught fish in their feed.

In Europe, industrial aquaculture of carnivorous fish at sea is damaging the environment and displacing traditional activities such as coastal small-scale fisheries.

On the island of Poros, Greece, for example, the plan is to increase the area dedicated to open net pen carnivorous fish farms by 28 times. Yet, underwater video depicts that marine ecosystem near the current small-scale pens is completely dead from the waste and pollution of the farms, and local professional fishermen attest to a loss of wild fish since the influx of fish farms.

Beyond Europe, the production of fishmeal and fish oil necessary to feed carnivorous farmed fish is depleting wild fish stocks. This is the case in West Africa where the overfishing of small pelagics such as sardines and mackerel for industrial fish farms in Europe is undermining food security and the livelihoods of small-scale fishers and women fish-processors. Fish is taken away from people in low-income countries to feed the farmed fish which will be consumed in wealthy nations.

The UN special rapporteur on the right to food acknowledged this in his report to the Human Rights Council in early 2024: “Many farmed fish are carnivorous species that require feed products harvested from wild fish stock, thereby creating another source of pressure on wild fish stocks and disrupting ecosystems.

Moreover, global feed companies are exacerbating food insecurity in some communities. For example, over half a million tons of pelagic fish that could feed over 33 million people in the region are instead extracted from the ocean along the coast of West Africa and converted to fishmeal and fish oil, primarily in order to feed farmed fish and livestock, mostly in Asia and Europe.”

The current EU strategy for aquaculture does not respond to the social and environmental challenges posed by this sector and fails to clearly define what “sustainable” aquaculture is. In fact, in a special report on aquaculture, the European Court of Auditors (ECA) found that the European Union has been pouring funds into the development of aquaculture with little proof that this has contributed to the sector’s “environmental and social sustainability or its competitiveness.” The ECA report further highlights that “there are currently no indicators available to monitor the environmental sustainability of EU aquaculture.”

Under the agriculture and fisheries agenda, Hungary has reaffirmed its wish to support farmers, and fish farmers, through a “farmer-friendly European food system.” Rather they should support low impact small-scale fishers as primary food producers.

Under the Hungarian presidency, the EU should discontinue support for industrial aquaculture of carnivorous species and instead promote more sustainable small-scale aquaculture options that can co-exist instead of negatively affecting small-scale fisheries in Europe and beyond. If Europe wants to be a model in sustainable ocean governance, it must place small-scale, low-impact fisheries and aquaculture at the heart of its food policy.

This is an open letter signed by the following organisations from Africa and Europe: African Confederation of Artisanal Fisheries Organisations (CAOPA), Coalition for Fair Fisheries Arrangements (CFFA), Feedback Europe, Low Impact Fishers of Europe (LIFE), Compassion in World Farming and the Rauch Foundation.

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The Coalition for Fair Fisheries Arrangements is a platform of European and African organisations that raises awareness about the impacts of the EU-Africa fisheries agreements on artisanal fishing communities.

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Author Bio

The Coalition for Fair Fisheries Arrangements is a platform of European and African organisations that raises awareness about the impacts of the EU-Africa fisheries agreements on artisanal fishing communities.

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Other additives include soy proteins, wheat gluten, and corn gluten meal, which are used to reduce reliance on fish-based ingredients and lower costs.

Vitamins and minerals are also added to ensure the nutritional adequacy of the feed.

The overuse of fishmeal and fish oil can lead to the depletion of wild fish stocks, which disrupts marine ecosystems.

Additionally, there are concerns about the accumulation of toxins such as PCBs and mercury in farmed fish, which can be a result of contaminated feed ingredients.

Title:

Content: Whitewashing ‘Blue Food’ Won’t Make the World More Green

Recent public messaging encouraging people to eat more seafood conveniently omits information about the environmental impact of fishing.

Marine wildlife is in a state of global emergency. Ninety percent of fish populations are at or below half their historical levels, and more fish species appear on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s red list of threatened species than any other class of animals. Since 1970 alone, global shark and ray populations have declined by more than 70 percent. The vaquita porpoise will be extinct in a matter of years, with the Māui dolphin and North Atlantic right whale likely following close behind. The primary driver of this aquatic extinction crisis is not climate change or plastic pollution but fishing, and conservation biologists around the world have warned that addressing this crisis requires overhauling traditional notions of fisheries management and implementing significant restrictions on catch limits.

Recently, however, calls have emerged not for less fishing, but more, under the banner of a new term encompassing all seafood and aquaculture products: “blue food.” The Blue Food Alliance, launched ahead of the UN Food Systems Summit, has brought together academics, policymakers, and corporate donors focused on increasing the consumption of sustainable seafood. The project was introduced with much fanfare, including a set of papers in the journal Nature Food, an editorial in its parent journal Nature, a number of well-placed op-eds by important academics and members of industry, and even a promotional video. According to the group’s report, titled “The Blue Food Assessment,” seafood and aquaculture often have lower environmental impact and provide greater nutritional benefits than terrestrial foods while contributing to food security, making it economically and ecologically sustainable.

But this blue-food narrative relies on generalizations and omissions that obscure the facts about the impacts of seafood. Just as harmful industries such as Big Oil and Big Livestock have promoted superficial production tweaks and embraced the language of sustainability, so too has the seafood industry. While the Blue Food Alliance boasts the membership of sustainability nonprofits like EAT, it also includes seafood titans like the Walton Family Foundation. As countless unsustainable industries claim to go green, public messaging on blue food bears all the hallmarks of a branding pivot—call it a “bluewash.”

It’s not that the message of this campaign and others like it are predicated on bad science, it’s that they deploy scientific claims selectively. In doing so, “The Blue Food Assessment” omits many of the harms of fishing and fish farming, and makes it seem far more sustainable than it actually is. Take the idea that consuming seafood is generally more environmentally friendly than eating land-based meat. To substantiate this, the authors use sustainability metrics from previous studies to score the greenhouse gas, nitrogen, and phosphorus emissions, as well as land and fresh water use, of various seafood and aquaculture products. This leads to the conclusion that these foods’ environmental impacts are lower than those of many agricultural products, particularly chicken, the least environmentally impactful industrially raised meat. The problem is that this is an apples-to-oranges comparison—it applies criteria designed for terrestrial agriculture to the oceans, while omitting environmental impacts specific to marine life. Eating wild fish may use virtually no land or freshwater, but it also depletes marine life populations, disrupts food webs, dredges up reefs and algal beds, and litters the ocean with ghost nets. The report is equally selective in its discussion of the health benefits of seafood. Fish may be rich in various vitamins and dietary minerals, but it can also be laden with microplastics and bioaccumulative toxins such as PCBs, PBDEs, and mercury. While these various shortcomings are acknowledged in some of the blue food manuscripts, they are all but absent from promotional materials, overstating the benefits of blue food while underplaying its shortcomings.

Specific claims aside, the nomenclature in this campaign is also concerning. While lumping all marine foods into the new category of “blue food” does little to facilitate comparison to other food groups, it does quite a bit to conflate species- and region-specific impact assessments. For example, while advocates boast that “the BFA assessment emphasizes the enormous diversity of blue foods,” the data are actually quite vague, with wide margins of error and broad categorizations like “miscellaneous marine fishes.” Even more problematically, this tactic also obscures the different producers and production processes within the seafood industry. For one thing, although it doesn’t explicitly advocate expanding industrial fishing, it is effusive about growing industrialized forms of fish production like aquaculture. But aquaculture does not take pressure off wild fisheries as much as it complements them, often requiring hundreds of wild-caught bait fish to feed a single farmed salmon or tuna. It also brings with it a range of risks and harms, including effluent pollution, mangrove deforestation, and viral proliferation both within aquaculture farms and spreading to wild fish. Yet “The Blue Food Assessment” recommends expansion of aquaculture despite these risks.

Even as they push for more aquaculture, blue food proponents do raise legitimate concerns about seafood being central to many cultures, food systems, and economies, especially among coastal communities in the Global South. However, while the BFA states that small-scale fishers haul in “over half the world’s fish catch,” reports indicate that subsistence fisheries account for less than 3 percent of the global catch and so-called “artisanal” fishing for another 20, meaning that three-quarters comes from industrial-scale operations like trawlers, seiners, and longliners that are widely condemned as unsustainable. By conflating industrial fishing practices that feed high-end consumers with subsistence fishing traditions, the blue food category creates needless confusion about the specific needs of coastal communities.

This follows a long history of using humanitarianism to disguise exploitation by the fishing industry. The Blue Food Alliance invokes human rights in the context of nutrition, but it omits the impacts of the aquaculture and fishing industries on marginalized peoples. Its press materials feature images of subsistence fishing communities hanging their catches to dry on modest clothing lines and selling them in hand-weaved baskets, a common marketing angle for seafood, used heavily by sustainability certification programs such as the Marine Stewardship Council. A recent analysis found that the MSC featured small-scale, low-impact fishing methods in roughly half of its promotional content, despite these methods representing only 7 percent of the products it certified.

The reality is that traditional fishing communities are the ones that suffer most from the impacts of the global fishing industry. But in “The Blue Food Assessment,” you won’t find photos of West African artisanal fishermen drowning in deep water after collisions with illegal supertrawlers, Salish chiefs decrying the cultural genocide of industrial herring extraction, or the tens of thousands people enslaved on up to a quarter of the global fishing fleet. The seafood industry wants its consumers to associate seafood with modest subsistence fishing traditions, but the truth is that the vast majority of seafood—and especially that which is sold in industrialized nations—is obtained by methods that pose a direct threat to those ways of life.

While the discourse around sustainable seafood can be heated, there are still fundamental solutions on which conservation biologists and fisheries scientists agree. As the renowned fisheries scientist Daniel Pauly puts it, “Fisheries issues are not difficult or intractable problems. We need to fish less and to create sanctuaries where fish populations can revive.” While policy should protect the food security and economic viability of coastal communities, especially in the Global South, it also must massively reduce subsidies and permits for both fishing and aquaculture and expand marine reserves to protect our marine ecosystems. Consumers should also be aware of the major impacts associated with consuming species like tuna at the top of food chains or those like crabs that live in sensitive ecosystems on the ocean floor, and realize that farmed fish aren’t necessarily low-impact either. Notably, the only “blue foods” with negative emissions impacts aren’t fish at all, but farmed algae and bivalves. However, the biggest environmental benefits of outplanting these species might be as building blocks for rewilding coastal ecosystems, which is also one of our most effective tools for drawing down atmospheric carbon. The truth is, transitioning to a sustainable food system will require people in industrialized nations to eat far fewer animals, both farmed and wild, terrestrial and aquatic.

However, rather than clarifying these diverse environmental stakes, the “blue food” narrative risks muddying the waters of the seafood sustainability debate by suggesting to consumers that a deeply destructive industry is actually sustainable, perhaps as an environmentally friendly alternative to factory-farmed meat. But it’s not that simple. The main beneficiaries of this sort of discourse are the big players in the fishing industry, who escape direct critique and benefit from a bluewashing bonanza that lifts all boats.

While the science underlying “The Blue Food Assessment” is reputable, its lens is narrow, removing blue food from the ecological context it comes from. The blue parts of our planet cycle our nutrients, stabilize our climate, produce half the oxygen in the air we breathe, and provide a home to millions of marine species—functions we risk disrupting if we value them simply as a source of food.

WIRED Opinion publishes articles by outside contributors representing a wide range of viewpoints. Read more opinions here, and see our submission guidelines here. Submit an op-ed at opinion@wired.com.

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What health concerns are there specifically related to additives in farmed salmon feed?

In Canada, for example, the use of pesticides like SLICE (emamectin benzoate) is regulated, though there are concerns about its decreasing effectiveness and the development of resistance in sea lice.

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Drug-resistant sea lice an increasing problem for B.C. fish farms, new study finds

By Melanie Nagy

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    May 14, 2022 (CTV Network) — Every spring, endangered juvenile wild salmon migrate from B.C.’s rivers to the Pacific Ocean, but their numbers are dwindling and some fear sea lice parasites are increasingly to blame. Sea lice are tiny, oval shaped crustaceans that can cling to the backs of wild salmon, feeding on their skin, muscle tissue and blood. Adult fish are generally not harmed when a few lice attach themselves, but juveniles with underdeveloped scales can be harmed or killed when heavily infested. While the parasite occurs naturally in the waters off B.C.’s coast, there’s long been concern over outbreaks on aquaculture farms where open-net pens make it possible for lice to move from farmed fish to young migrating salmon. “Salmon farms act as this year-round reservoir for sea lice, potentially providing sea lice to wild juvenile salmon when they wouldn’t normally get them,” conservation biologist Sean Godwin said. Godwin is the lead author in a recent study that looked at the state of sea lice in the Pacific Ocean. Along with his fellow researchers, he found the parasite is increasingly becoming resistant to one of the main tools the industry relies on to combat the problem. “Our paper found that this tool, which is a pesticide known [as] SLICE, or emamectin benzoate, is becoming less effective and that sea lice are developing resistance to it on farms here,” Godwin said. To assess parasite resistance, “bioassay, treatment and salmon-louse count data from 2010 to 2021” were analyzed. During that time, the researchers found a notable decrease in the effectiveness of SLICE. “It is going to be more difficult for salmon farms to control sea lice outbreaks on their farms,” said Godwin. In the province’s stunning Clayoquot Sound, Bonny Glambeck routinely uses a fine-mesh net and a sample cup to test the waters near fish farms. Glambeck heads the Tofino-based conservation society known as Clayoquot Action and every year she monitors industry lice counts and tracks wild salmon infestations. “The control of sea lice on fish farms is something I do not believe the industry has ever been able to crack,” she said. “Parasites like these sea lice proliferate on these farms and then they can pass them on to wild salmon. With that, we feel that every year that goes by and these farms are allowed to pollute the waters with these infestations, they are just wiping out another generation of wild salmon.” Fisheries and Oceans Canada requires all fish farms in Canadian coastal waters to have a sea lice management plan. The federal department also places a limit of three lice per salmon during the spring when young salmon are out-migrating and are most vulnerable. In addition to that, the industry publicly reports lice counts on individual company websites every month. “The worry is that those lice levels might accumulate and then be released back to affect wild migratory salmon. The science doesn’t support that, but the concern exists so the industry responds to that,” said Brian Kingzett. Kingzett is the science and policy director with the BC Salmon Farmers Association. He says the industry has warned the federal government for years about the waning efficacy of SLICE, and has long called on Ottawa to approve new pesticide options. “There are other anti-parasite agents that have been approved in other areas of the world and we would certainly like to add that to our toolbox.” While SLICE is the only approved pesticide in Canada, it is not the only option for a fish farm struggling with a lice infestation. Kingzett says other environmentally friendly methods include the use of specialized delousing boats. One readily used vessel can suck fish from ocean-based pens into tanks where pressurized water is used to forcibly remove any attached lice. According to the industry, any dislodged bugs are collected by filters for disposal so they are not reintroduced to the marine environment. “During the last five years, the industry has spent about $100 million on importing new technologies,” Kingzett said. “Fish farming is an important industry in B.C. because we are facing a global seafood shortage and the farming sector is looking to provide sustainable, high-quality product.” The industry, however, is controversial and there’s been an ongoing battle to have all fish farms in the province removed. Earlier this month, there was a large protest in Tofino involving Indigenous leaders, conservationists and environmentalists. The group took to the waters near a local fish farm to voice their opposition to the industry and call on Ottawa to evict them. “It is a do-or-die moment for the salmon farming industry,” said Alexandra Morton, who is an independent biologist and longtime wild salmon activist. “We need to do whatever we can to save wild salmon populations because they are sadly on the verge of extinction.” In response, those in support of fish farms argue they are not a direct threat to wild salmon and are a vital industry. According to the BC Salmon Farmers Association, there are nearly 5,000 jobs linked to fish farms and at least $1 billion “in economic activity” is generated annually. Despite that, Ottawa has previously announced that it’s committed to phasing out open-net salmon farms in B.C. by 2025. In addition, it’s uncertain if 79 federal fish farm licenses expiring in June will be renewed.

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Matthew Talbot
matthew.talbot@bellmedia.ca

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What countries or jurisdictions have regulations concerning additives in salmon feed?

What countries or jurisdictions have regulations concerning antibiotics in farmes salmon?

The industry is calling for the approval of new pesticide options to address these challenges.

In the European Union, there is criticism of the lack of clear sustainability indicators for aquaculture, including the use of feed additives.