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The tilapia referenced in the online warning reproduced above are a fast-growing tropical species of fish native to Africa whose popularity in the commercial food industry has surged in recent years. (Technically, tilapia is not the name of one specific species of fish but rather a common name for dozens of different species of cichlid fish.) Tilapia is now the fourth most-consumed seafood in the United States, after shrimp, tuna and salmon, and due to increased demand, much of the tilapia consumed by the public is now farm-raised rather than wild-caught. A June 2013 report from the Earth Policy Institute noted that worldwide production of farmed fish now not only exceeds the production of beef, but that consumption of farmed fish is soon expected to exceed consumption of wild-caught fish: One of the reasons for the popularity of tilapia is that they are short-lived and primarily vegetarian and therefore do not accumulate substantial amounts of mercury by consuming other fish, as other common predatory food fish (such as tuna) do. This factor also means, as reported in a June 2013 National Geographic article, that tilapia are more efficient to farm because they eat lower on the food chain: Farmed fish aren't necessarily inferior to their wild-caught brethren, any more than farmed beef or grain is inferior to wild varieties of those foods. And there's no guarantee that wild-caught fish are a safer food source than farmed fish, as the former often ingest a variety of toxins and other pollutants that flow into the world's waterways. However, farmed tilapia can vary considerably in quality based on where they are produced. Tilapia are typically farmed in the U.S. and Canada using tanks with closed recirculating systems, but much of the tilapia consumed by Americans is imported from Latin America and Asia (particularly Ecuador, China, and Taiwan), where the fish are usually raised in outdoor freshwater ponds. (China is the world's largest producer of farmed tilapia, supplying approximately 40% of global production; nearly 40% of that output is exported to the U.S., primarily in the form of frozen fillets.) As reported by the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), in Ecuador tilapia are grown at low densities alongside shrimp to reduce water pollution, resulting in less disease and chemical use. But in China and Taiwan, water pollution and the use of chemicals in tilapia farming is a concern. One of the issues with tilapia farmed in China is that smaller, independent farmers face economic pressures to use animal manure rather than more expensive commercial feed for farmed fish, a practice which contaminates water and makes the fish more susceptible to spreading foodborne diseases. A July 2009 report from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on the safety of food imports from China noted that in that country Fish are often raised in ponds where they feed on waste from poultry and livestock and cited an increased rate of FDA rejection of fish imports from China between 2000 and 2008: Similarly, an October 2012 Bloomberg article observed that the FDA had rejected 820 Chinese seafood shipments since 2007, including 187 that contained tilapia, and furnished examples of the practice of using manure as feed for farmed fish in China: The Monterey Bay Aquarium's Seafood Watch program issued a report on pond-farmed tilapia from China in June 2012 which upgraded its previous Avoid recommendation to a Good Alternative, although that organization's ratings primarily focus on environmental sustainability and ecological impact rather than food safety issues. China's increased recommendation status was due mostly to a reduction in water use and the discharge of effluent by tilapia farmers — factors which are local environmental concerns — rather than enhanced food safety measures. The report noted that use of banned chemicals by Chinese tilapia farmers is an ongoing concern: Issuing a blanket declaration about whether American consumers should shun all food (or all of a particular type of food) imported from China is problematic because, as the FDA noted, the Chinese food industry is so broad and diverse:
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