07-22-2016, 06:36 AM
I am acquainted with the guy who farms fish in the old quarry up at Mokuleia (Kaena pt, Oahu). He was in the Hawaiian Airlines in-flight magazine. My info is years old but at that time he used commercially available swimming pool liners when building small breeding tanks. The bulk of the fish were in cages in the lake but he did have several of these small tanks/pools. He expressed no concern whatsoever about chemical leaching. I think that the waste load from the fish is such that he changes the water often enough that it is not an issue. These tanks had water pumped in and out continuously.
Someone told me a story, pretty sure it was him, about when they were in Viet Nam. When working in the fields if the farmer saw a rat they would drop everything to catch it. Then they ate it. The teller didn't say but it was implied that it was well cleaned, cooked, seasoned, etc as with any other food source, the lesson being that these were naturally raised rats and would have been no worse than a rabbit or squirrel. We associate rats with garbage and sewers but that is just because we tend to live in large cities with concentrations of such waste. Anyway a cleanly raised catfish is I am sure as good as any other fish.
Someone told me a story, pretty sure it was him, about when they were in Viet Nam. When working in the fields if the farmer saw a rat they would drop everything to catch it. Then they ate it. The teller didn't say but it was implied that it was well cleaned, cooked, seasoned, etc as with any other food source, the lesson being that these were naturally raised rats and would have been no worse than a rabbit or squirrel. We associate rats with garbage and sewers but that is just because we tend to live in large cities with concentrations of such waste. Anyway a cleanly raised catfish is I am sure as good as any other fish.