If people bought whole fish instead, do you think those parts wouldn't still go to waste? I guess you could use them for stock, but really, how many people would bother. If anything, I would guess food processing companies would have an easier time finding some use for them (like you said, as pet food or whatever).

Depends on the fish. The tails of many fish are great fried. It's just another crunchy item. Salmon skin is also tasty as long as you get it crisp when cooking. Mahi skin is kind of thick and chewy so I usually throw that away (or into the marsh for the local critters to eat). Most of the bass type fish skins are also tasty.

Heads are harder to deal with unless you want to make your own stock.

I grew up on the coast, catching, cleaning, and cooking my own fish all the time. I know not everyone has those experiences.

Industry factory farming is many horrible things but its not wasteful. They use every part of the animals to increase profit margins.

Why would you make such a confident assertion, filled with such vitriol, when it's completely wrong? I don't understand your motivation for this.

Here, this link will set you straight, and it has a real discussion of the actual downsides and consequences of this practice.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fish_meal

Rather than what you said, which is complete nonsense. I'd accuse you of lying, since you used that word, but I'll be charitable and assume you were exhibiting ignorance.

Your link makes it clear that fish meal is made from fish bones and entrails that are inedible by humans, not their heads, skins and tails that I'm talking about and which are edible. Plus, it's made from by-catch which is not mant for human consumption anyway:

> Fishmeal is made from the bones and offal left over from fish caught by commercial fisheries. The vast majority of the fish from which fishmeal is manufactured are not used for human consumption; rather, fishmeal is generally manufactured from by-catch.[1][2]

You're just embarrassing yourself at this point.

Excuse me but, do you have some weird behavioural problem? You burst out of nowhere telling me I'm filled with vitriol, you throw a blunt link at my comment without explaining why it disagrees with what I say, and when I quote from it a part that shows that your comment is irrelevant to what I say you resort to insults?

What exactly are you trying to say? What is it that you don't like with my original comment? What do you disagree with? How does your fish meal link disagree with it? Can you articulate all that clearly, or do you just want to pick a fight?

Well, the upside is that if some time before we make cold fusion a reality we are able to make safe, nutritious and cheap artificial meat & co., at least it's going to be more easily accepted by folks that won't expect to also see the other body parts.

It might, but only because those people are used to eating food made in factories. But making food in factories at ridiculous scales is what causes the excesses of consumption and waste observed in the Western world, in the first place. Vat grown meat is more of the same and I fail to see how it solves anythig, rather than making people dependent even more on the food industry, the same food industry that wants to sell them fish sticks, hot dogs and burgers.

Is that what it means? I take that as "you won't need to dispose of waste"...

Sure, someone else will do the dirty job for "you". Food waste as a service.

If those bits were removed in homes they are almost always going to be wasted without municipal composting, and even that is still wasteful. If they are removed at scale (no pun intended) there is a much higher likelihood that they will be used as a byproduct in pet food or fertilizer or something.

I'm talking about the skins, heads and tails of fish that have no business being removed because they're edible and nutritious. I think you 're talking about the guts, that are almost always thrown out anyway.

Food waste starts with cultural norms that make some foods taboo, essentially. Like for example "offal" as the perfectly edible entrails of ruminants are derogatorily known.

In 1953 I seriously doubt there was so much concern about it, much less in an advertisment directed to consumers.

Note the oxymoron in that advert: "Fresh Frozen!".

That's not an oxymoron. It means they were frozen right away after being caught. A similar term today used especially for things like shrimp is "Individual Quick Frozen" or IQF. Shrimp are frozen on the boat that catches them.

Do you think anyone ever freezes food when it's already unfit for consumption? "Fresh frozen" is nothing more than marketing speak.

There is a pretty wide span of time between catch and "unfit for consumption."

This particular product may be totally lying about how fresh they froze their fish, but it's still not an oxymoron.