My trusty calendar of worldly goings-on tells me that it’s National Fishing Week. Which means seven days of celebrating abuse to fish and anglers coming out in their droves to pose in ridiculous photos to try and prove their manliness. Forgive my scepticism, but what a load of tosh. Real men (and women!) don’t go anywhere near a fishing line and need to kill living, breathing creatures to prove anything. Compassion? Phwoar, now that’s what I go for!

Here’s a quick run-down of why we should not be celebrating National Fishing Week:

1. Fish aren’t swimming vegetables any more than dogs are. They have nervous systems, feel and respond to pain, and even throwing them back into the water after having a hook shoved through their mouths is cruel.

2. Ninety percent of large fish populations have been exterminated in the past 50 years and one report estimates that by 2048 our oceans will have been completely over-fished.

3. When dragged from the murky depths, fish undergo excruciating decompression - the internal pressure ruptures their swimbladders, pops out their eyes and pushes their stomachs through their mouths. When they’re tossed onboard, many slowly suffocate or are crushed to death.

4. Fish’s bodies absorb toxic chemicals from the water around them, and the chemicals become more concentrated as they move their way up the food chain. Big fish eat little fish, who eat littler fish, so you end up with a whole cocktail of nasties on your dinnerplate.

5. Vegan ‘fish-fingers’, ‘fishess steaks’ and vegan ‘scampi’ taste so good, so you don’t need to compromise on compassion to get a similar taste.

PETA has been entangled in a bit of a scrap with The Wright Stuff show, over their two goldfish – Brad and Jen. Well, I have some good news for you: get your address book out, they’ve moved! The fish are now homed in a larger tank and with “environmental enrichment.”

Of course it still sucks that Brad-fish and Jen-fish are living in the middle of a stage set, surrounded by bright lights and loud noises. Maybe the Swiss Guard will take notice, invade London, and liberate the fishies once and for all.

Image: Crave / CC

In an effort to transform Tesco’s welfare standards for chickens, TV chef Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall is raising cash to get his resolution to the supermarket chain’s shareholders. In the resolution he urges for new minimum welfare standards, including lower stocking densities and more environmental stimuli for the birds. Apparently, Tesco wanted nearly £90,000 to pay for the printing and postage costs, so he went about raising the money himself, with the help of CIWF. Though I’d love it if chickens weren’t bred, slaughtered and purchased for human consumption, you gotta admit his efforts are worthy of some respect. Especially when you find out that he put in £30,000 of his own money.

But the people here at PETA aren’t exactly over the moon that in an auction to help raise the cash, a fishing trip worth over £3,000 is in the loot. Here’s an email that got sent to the TV chef - let’s hope he drops the trip. I’ll keep you posted.

“Dear Chef Hugh,

I am writing on behalf of PETA to thank you for your efforts to reform the way Tesco treats chickens and to ask that you drop the fishing expedition from your list of auction items. If you agree to drop the fishing trip, we will happily donate £2,000 toward your shareholder efforts with Tesco.

To put it graphically, imagine reaching up to pluck a tasty apple from a tree and finding your hand suddenly impaled by a metal hook that drags you—the whole weight of your body pulling on that one hand—out of the air and into an atmosphere in which you cannot breathe. This is exactly what fish experience when they are hooked for “sport.”

Many people grow up fishing without ever considering the terror and suffering that fish endure when they’re impaled and yanked from the water—although their struggling and gasping should be a tip-off. Anglers rarely realise, let alone stop to contemplate, that fish are complex individuals who communicate with each other and have likes and dislikes, friends and enemies. In fact, if anglers treated cats or dogs, or even chickens, the way they treat fish, they would be had up on charges of cruelty to animals.

We believe that you are a kind man who would never dream of hooking a dog through the mouth and dragging her behind your car. We hope therefore that you will reconsider and drop the fishing trip from this auction.

Thank you again for your consistent and outspoken opposition to factory farming and for championing chicken welfare, for they are certainly the most abused farmed animals.

We look forward to hearing back from you.”

Image: Ecorazzi / CC

As we all know by now, fish are pretty smart. They have long-term memories, can use tools and are interesting individuals, just like dogs and cats.

A load of complaints have been pouring in from members of the public about the goldfish on channel Five’s chat-show The Wright Stuff. They sit in a small bowl with no stimulation, and are clearly there for ‘decoration’ purposes. Not to mention it must be stressful being surrounded by stage lights and the general noise you get on a TV chat show.

The science on fish intelligence and their need for social stimulation is so clear that Switzerland has just banned keeping solitary goldfish as ‘pets’, as did Rome a few years back. Picture it like this: to keep a fish in a tiny bowl for his or her entire life is like shoving your dog in a closet and never letting him out.

Here’s the letter that got sent this morning and what Yahoo had to say about it.

23 May 2008

Nick Vaughan-Smith, Series Editor
The Wright Stuff
Channel 5 News

Dear Mr Vaughan-Smith,

PETA is an international non-profit organisation with more than 2 million members and supporters dedicated to the protection of animals. We have received complaints about the live goldfish contained in a small bowl on the reporter’s desk during The Wright Stuff on Channel 5. We are writing to ask you to please consider the following information and find this goldfish a more suitable permanent home in a large tank with places to hide and explore for stimulation.

Goldfish might be small and somewhat alien to us, but I’m certain you’ll agree that they are worthy of care and respect. Goldfish have personalities and abilities that most people don’t know about. For example, they have interesting ways of communicating with each other, forming bonds and grieving when family members and companions die. When confined to toxic enclosures without proper filtration, fish are often poisoned by their own waste, which results in slow and painful deaths. I have enclosed a news article that includes findings from studies showing that fish have feelings and feel pain. The article also encourages people to consider the welfare of fish in the same way that they would consider the welfare of other animals.

All too often, fish and other animals are considered nothing more than expendable commodities and their deaths are caused by inadequate handling and treatment. The city of Rome and entire country of Switzerland have banned keeping goldfish in bowls because the containers do not meet the animals’ needs, and as one sponsor of a similar law in Monza, Italy, pointed out, bowls give fish “a distorted view of reality”. We hope that you agree that no animal deserves to be robbed of their natural habitat and forced to endure a life of endlessly swimming around in the same few cubic inches of water.

We urge you to make The Wright Stuff a more compassionate place for animals and viewers alike by removing the goldfish from the program and finding the fish a permanent home with companions, lots of room to swim around, a working air tank to provide oxygen, a filter to remove waste and places for the fish to hide and explore.

So that we can inform those who have contacted us with concerns, can we please hear from you? Thank you for your consideration of this very important matter. I look forward to hearing from you.

Sincerely,

Bruce Friedrich
Vice President
International Grassroots Campaigns

Enclosure: “Goldfish Have Feelings, Too, Say Fish Researchers”, The Sunday
Times, 28 May, 2006

Image: BBC / CC

If you needed any more proof that fish are smart, sensitive creatures that deserve more than being battered or stuck in a glass bowl – meet Comet. He plays football, basketball, rugby, limbo dances and more. Now before you start thinking, “Oh that’s soooo cute, I want one. Isn’t Comet amazing?” take the blinkers off and also think about these fun facts:

Fish are, by nature, intelligent beings. Comet is pretty darn amazing but so are all the other fish out there. So don’t go thinking he’s one of a kind.

If fish are proven to be this clever, do they really deserve to be doomed to a 10×10 bowl for the rest of their lives, merely to amuse us impressionable humans? A fish tank is a glass prison – what’s the crime?

Don’t even get me started on fish as food. If you eat fish, the story about Comet’s ‘tricks’ should serve as a good basis to, well… stop eating them. Would you eat your dog? ‘Cause dogs do some neat ‘tricks’ too.

Just in time for Earth Day tomorrow, here’s an exclusive interview Sir Paul McCartney did with PETA US about the positive impact of vegetarianism on the environment. Enjoy!

1) What do you think is the most personal change a person can make in
their own lifestyle to help the environment? Some people often think
recycling and taking shorter showers is all they need to do. What would
you add?

I think the biggest change anyone could make in their own
lifestyle would be to become vegetarian. Although this may seem to some
like an unusual answer, the Global Meat Industry and the land & water
required to service it is one of the major contributors to Global
Warming. This surprising fact has emerged in research over the past few
years. So I would urge everyone to think about taking this simple step
to help our precious environment and save it for the children of the
future.

2) What do you think about the fact that most major environmental
organizations and the most prominent environmental advocates are
omitting vegetarianism from their list of the top ways to help curtail
global warming?

I think it’s very surprising that most major environmental
organisations are leaving the option of going vegetarian off their lists
of top ways to curtail global warming. Of course there are many
powerful businesses which would wish to resist this idea but it is
becoming clearer that a simple change in peoples’ lifestyles could make
a major difference to our environment. What is interesting is that
nowadays it is so easy to become vegetarian and so many people are
reducing meat in their diet. That is a simple but extremely effective
step that many people could take to help the environment and improve
their own health at the same time.

3) How do you feel about the disappearance of birds, other wild animals
and natural places around the globe?

It is such a pity that the wildlife and natural places of this
beautiful planet we inhabit are being destroyed by thoughtless
industrialization. This scandal can be halted and there are hopeful
signs that people are starting to realize that this must be done to
secure a brighter future for our children and theirs.

4) What do you feel is the best step for a person who is concerned about
over-fishing, marine pollution and the clear-cutting of the ocean floor
by commercial fisheries, to take?

Unfortunately many people seem to think that vegetarians eat
fish but this is not so and when you consider the over fishing, the
marine pollution and the huge damage to our precious oceans that are
caused by commercial fishing it becomes obvious that a vegetarian
lifestyle would greatly improve our environment and help to save our
oceans. The surprising thing is that even though many of us, including
me, were brought up as traditional meat and fish eaters, it is a simple
matter these days and an exciting one to consider changing your diet to
a healthier one which not only brings benefits to the person who does it
but also to the planet as a whole.

That’s what it said in a letter we just fired off to London Aquarium director Audrey Summers, urging her to stop serving marine animals in the aquarium’s café and to cancel the lease of the Japanese restaurant in the aquarium’s building. Fish are intelligent, they feel pain just as all animals do, and it’s just plain wrong to serve up dead fish in an aquarium that teaches people about the wonders of, well, fish.

This is what the letter said:

Dear Ms. Summers:

I am writing on behalf of the European affiliate of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), which is the largest animal rights organisation in the world, to ask that you stop selling fish in your aquarium’s café and cancel the lease for Ozu, the Japanese restaurant that is housed in your building. We’re sure that upon further reflection, you’ll come to agree with us that serving marine animals at an aquarium is like serving poodle burgers at a dog show.

Experts from around the world report that fish are intelligent, sensitive and interesting animals. Fish and Fisheries published an article in 2003 which cited more than 500 research papers that show that fish possess long-term memories, complex social structures and learning patterns, and the ability to use tools and even build things. In some respects, the cognitive abilities of fish surpass those of dogs and even some non-human primates. In light of these discoveries, an institution with a mission that includes teaching people to respect and appreciate marine animals certainly shouldn’t offer their corpses for sale in its café and restaurant.

The treatment of both commercially caught fish and those who are raised on fish farms would warrant cruelty-to-animals charges in the United Kingdom if animals we are more familiar with, such as dogs and cats, were treated as badly. When fish are caught in huge commercial fishing nets and then hauled up from the deep, the intense internal pressure caused by decompression ruptures their swim bladders, pops their eyes out of their faces, and pushes their esophagi and stomachs out through their mouths. Fish who are raised on fish farms are crowded together so tightly that they must be drugged so that they can live in conditions that would otherwise kill them. When they are killed, fish are beaten with clubs or packed in ice while they are still alive, or they might have their gills and bellies slit, all while they are still conscious.

Serving fish also poses a health risk to your visitors. Fish absorb all the contamination from the water in which they live, so fish flesh is laced with toxins such as mercury, lead, arsenic, PCBs, pesticides and even industrial-strength fire retardant. Consuming even small amounts of fish has been shown to affect memory and coordination in adults. The Food Standards Agency advises pregnant and breastfeeding women to avoid eating oily fish such as tuna, shark, swordfish and marlin as the mercury in the fish can harm the developing nervous system of an unborn child. Of course, all fish is contaminated, though some fish is more contaminated than others. So in addition to being cruel, serving fish flesh is also poisoning your patrons.

Sincerely,

Lauren Bowey
Campaign Coordinator
PETA Europe Ltd.