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Back to Animal Rights
To add interest I have
interspersed this commentary with thought provoking
quotations from philosophers, ethicists, scientists
and other notable thinkers both past and present.
If you have men who will exclude any of God's
creatures from the shelter of compassion and pity, you
will have men who will deal likewise with their fellow
men.
St. Francis of Assisi
Animals are our younger brothers and sisters, also on
the ladder of evolution but a few rungs lower. It is an
important part of our responsibilities to help them in
their ascent, and not to retard their development by
cruel exploitation of their helplessness.
Lord Dowding
Here I will focus my
attention on fish and Crustaceans particularly lobsters as it is these creatures
who are mostly exploited as food, other aquatic animals will be
included in due course. However keep in mind in the
catching of fish and lobsters many other aquatic animals
suffer and die as a consequence as you can read further
down.
Fish
You have just
dined, and however scrupulously the slaughterhouse is
concealed in the graceful distance of miles, there is
complicity.
Ralph Waldo
Emerson
There are more
species of fish than all other vertebrates
(animals with a back bone), combined, including mammals,
reptiles, amphibians and birds.
Fish have a
nervous system
and like you and I feel pain
Fish are hugely
diverse, they are found in a wide range of habitats as
diverse as hot springs, rivers, ponds and vast oceans in
depths of over 7,000 metres, they are highly evolved and
like you and I they are complex animals with the ability
to feel pain and distress. Fish have been evolving for over 400
million years, longer than we have and have acquired
some remarkable abilities. To gather information fish
have evolved specialized sensory organs. Evolution has
equipped fish to monitor temperature, light, water
currents and vibrations to name just a few of their
remarkable abilities.
Researchers have
discovered that fish are fast learners and have the
amazing ability to carry mental maps around in
their heads and can retain memories for months. In his
book Pleasurable Kingdoms Jonathan Balcombe describes
the incredible memory of the frillfin goby which lives
in rook tide-pools when the tide is high:
"If a rock
pool begins to dry up these fish leap to an adjacent
pool. Obviously, a missed leap might be fatal, and the
accuracy must be great in both terms of distance
and direction. How do frillfin gobies do this being as
they cannot see the adjacent pool? They memorise the
topography of the rocks during high tide. Captive fish
showed a marked improvement in orientation after an
overnight opportunity to swim over the pools during an
artificial high tide. Removing the gobies from
their home tide pools for various periods of time before
retesting their jumping ability showed that their memory
of familiar pools lasted about 40 days. Thanks to these
mental capacities, gobies caught in a shallow depression
avoid having to make a pure leap of faith."
Fish are truly
amazing creatures when you get to know them, they are
sentient, aware, intelligent, but most importantly they
feel pain.
Often though
cruelty to fish is overlooked.
“Fish constitute the greatest source of confused
thinking and inconsistency on earth at the moment with
respect to pain.
“You will get people very excited about dolphins because
they are mammals, and about horses and dogs, if they are
not treated properly. At the same time you will have
fishing competitions on the River Murray at which
thousands of people snare fish with hooks and allow them
to asphyxiate on the banks, which is a fairly
uncomfortable and miserable death”
Professor Bill Runciman
Professor of Anaesthesia and Intensive Care
Adelaide University quoted in Animals Australia The
voice for Animals' website
Fishing // Animals Australia
Despite the fact that the majority
of people have at least had some basic biology taught to
them at school
there are sadly many people who do not realise
that a fish is an animal, that fish like humans and
other animals feel pain. It is at times difficult
enough to get people to understand that land animals
feel pain and have the capacity to suffer and therefore
should not be treated as commodities for exploitation
and as a source of food. However the moment the subject
of fish is mentioned many people without even thinking
it through will say fish do not have feelings, they are
cold blooded, they do not feel pain. I recall a
friend of mine saying much the same thing, somehow she
had got it into her mind that because it is said, and
widely accepted, that fish do not have feelings in their
mouths when the fisherman's hook sinks in, that in
general fish do not have feelings, are not sentient or experience pain or
suffering. To begin with this first assumption is erroneous, in fact fish
are particularly well supplied with pain specific nerves
endings in their mouth and lips, therefore the
fisherman's hook is indeed very painful. Scientists who
study pain are in complete agreement that fish have a
similar response to pain as we do; the pain response of
fish is basically identical to that in mammals and
birds.
The British Farm Animal
Welfare Council reports:
“The fact that fish are
cold-blooded does not prevent them from having a pain
system and, indeed, such a system is valuable in
preserving life and maximising the biological fitness of
individuals.”
The problem
with the term cold blooded also presents the uninformed
with some confusion, which leads many to think that fish
and other sea creatures do not feel pain. The term cold
blooded is really an inaccuracy as at times a so called
cold blooded animal's blood temperate may well be warmer
than your own. The term means that the animals blood
temperate varies according to his surroundings. For
instance reptiles such as lizards are often seen in the
morning warming themselves in the sun and until their
body temperature raises due to the sun's warm they are
sluggish. Fish in tropical waters will most certainly
have a higher body temperature. Cold blooded than simply refers to an
animal whose blood temperate varies in accordance with
the temperature of their environment.
However the whole
misconception of warm or cold blooded is in any case a
misnomer, it is irrelevant as the feelings of pain arise
from the brain and the central nervous system. Hot
or cold blooded, fish and other sea creatures feel pain.
Fish have a brain and a nervous system anatomically
similar to ourselves and other mammals; a single nerve
cord runs along the spinal cord and complex nerves which
allow the creature to feel as much pain as you or I. As
already mentioned there are, contrary to popular belief,
a good supply of nerves at both the lips and mouth, a
fact fishermen fishing with a line and hook
conveniently ignore.
For scientific
evidence read about recent research by scientists from
the Roslin Institute and the University of Edinburgh:
BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Fish do feel pain,
scientists say
Of note is the
following observation:
"Fish demonstrated a
'rocking' motion, strikingly similar to the kind of
motion seen in stressed higher vertebrates like mammals."
Rocking back wards and forwards is a common
indication of stress in humans.
Research has show
that fish avoid painful stimuli, this suggests that pain
causes them stress that they wish to avoid. Like other
animals in circumstances of confinement in captivity
fish exhibit abnormal behaviours indicating stress and
distress.
Fish are like other
animals sentient, they have conscious awareness.
Fish
are intelligent creatures, research shows they can use
tools, they have long term memories of at least three or
four months and live in complex socials structures.
Here is what a specialist in fish behaviour has to say
about the abilities of fish:
Fish are more
intelligent than they appear. In many areas, such as
memory, their cognitive powers match or exceed those of
‘higher’ vertebrates including non-human primates
Culum
Brown University of Edinburgh
For more
information about fish intelligence and sentience:
See:
Sentience in Farm Animals: Aquatic Animals
In view of mounting
evidence we can no longer allow fish to be treated in
the inhumane horrendously cruel way they are treated at
present.
Yet despite these facts
not much thought is given even by some animal lovers and
those interested in animal rights to the pain,
suffering and abuse of these creatures by the fishing
industry and by recreational fishing. Countless billions of fish
are killed each year, world wide the numbers are
staggering. During both commercial and recreational fishing
much suffering takes place as fully conscious fish are
impaled, crushed, sliced open gutted and suffocated.
Such methods
of killing fish are shockingly cruel and would not be
allowed to happen by law under the protection of animal
welfare acts, if the animal in question was your dog or
cat. Always keep in mind that fish feel the same pain as
your pet.
Eighty to 100
million tonnes of fish are caught each year, I don't
like to lump these creature into tonnage for each fish
is an individual as are you and I but sadly this is the way
that these statistics are measured. In the USA it is
estimated that the number of aquatic animals caught for
food is a staggering 15 billion tonnes! Most of the fish
caught in UK waters are herring, cod, jacks, redfish and mackerel.
There are of course a good number of fresh water species
of fish which are farmed or fished such as salmon and
trout.
Sea fish are caught
in drift nets which measure an astonishing 40 KMs long!
These huge nets are not of course discriminatory and
along with the unfortuante fish which you may eat at
your locale restaurant or have with your chips, other
sea creatures get caught in these nets. Among them include,
sea turtles, dolphins, porpoises, rays, sharks, even small whales and
diving sea birds and indeed any number of species of
fish and other sea creatures such as shell fish, crabs, starfish, every conceivable type of creature you can
imagine. all of which are not wanted. Many fish are
crushed to death under the weight of the catch including
many of the creatures who are not wanted but who were
unfortunate enough to be in the wrong place at the wrong
time and get caught in these nets.
When the nets are
bought to the surface all of these animals termed " by
catch" mostly now dead are shovelled back into the sea.
Those still alive fall pry to flocks of scavenging
birds or slowly bleed to death in the water or die of
their injuries. Shrimp catches may result in the throwing away
of 85 percent of the "by catch". it is estimated that as many
as 1000 sea mammals die each day as a result of
being caught in fishing nets.
The fish that died
under the crush of thier fellows where perhaps more
fortunate, at least in comparison to what happens to
those who are still alive. Those that arrive on
the decks who have survived the crush are either
left to suffocate; plaice can struggle for life gasping
for air for many hours and are filleted or disembowelled whilst still
alive.
Many fish are
caught which are not edible for humans, but which are
used for purposes other that eating. This is a growing
sector of industrial fishing where such species as sand
eels and ling are caught to provide fish oil or used
as high protein live stock or salmon feed or as
fertilizer.
Keep in mind that of course the UK is not
the only nation to decimate the ocean's aquatic life. The
USA have commercial trawlers the size of football fields
which can remain at sea for six months at a time, they
are
equipped with the latest tracking devices to track fish
and other sea creatures, tens of thousands in one net,
which like the UK are many metres long, the unfortunate
creatures thus caught may be
dragged long the sea bottom for hours before being
killed.
Commercial fishing
is big business and the methods used to catch and kill
these creatures are just as cruel and cause as much
suffering in there own way as that suffered by land animals in
factory farms and slaughter houses. There is though even less
compassion for fish, workers in these industries see fish
as inanimate, no different than a vegetable and they are
as a consequence treated with no regard to the pain
and suffering experienced by these animals. There are no
regulations whatsoever, fishermen are able to do cart
blanch whatsoever they wish. Yet we now know that fish
suffer as do we and other animals, they are
conscious aware beings who feel pain, fear and distress;
imagine just for a moment the enormity of
suffering inflicted on these sea creatures
As billions of
aquatic creatures are killed every year our oceans have
become decimated, 90 percent of fish populations have
been exterminated in the past 50 years!
Fish do not escape
the horrors of factory farming either. Many people
including myself are amazed at the number of factory
fish farms which we have here in the UK which number between 1,000 to
15000.These farms mainly rear trout and salmon. These
fish are an expensive food, there is a good profit in trout and
salmon. As many as 20,000 young salmon are crammed into
freshwater tanks measuring between four and ten metres in
diameter. Like factory farmed land animals fish are
given antibiotics: after a year to eighteen months of age
they are taken to lochs and estuary cages where they are
injected with antibiotics to control disease. They are
also regularly treated with pesticides to kill of sea
lice. Nonetheless despite this excessive use of
chemicals about 20 to 50 per cent die of disease such as
cancer and liver failure.
For two weeks prior
to being killed they are starved. This cruelty is
undertaken simply for the convenience of the workers
because it is less messy to remove the intestines of a
fish that has not eaten. Finally after two weeks of
suffering starvation their wretched lives
are brought to an end as they are killed whilst still
conscious by being cut across the gills with a sharp
knife.
There will
be no justice as long as man will stand with a knife or
with a gun and destroy those who are weaker than he is.
Isaac Bashevis
Singer
As individuals
there is one way to help bring about change and that is to stop eating
fish and other aquatic creatures. There are a
number of campaigns you can support. For ideas, campaigns,
petitions and more information please visit the
following
websites
Viva! - Vegetarians International Voice for Animals fish
Fishing // Animals Australia
FishingHurts.com >> Fishing 101
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Photo Credit Jumping Rainbow Trout by flikr user Qmnonic
jumping
rainbow trout on Flickr - Photo Sharing!
Licensed under
Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic delete
Lobster
It is just like man's vanity and
impertinence to call an animal dumb because it is dumb to his dull perceptions.
Mark Twain
“Lobsters are
remarkable, sophisticated creatures.”
Marine biologist Jelle Atema
We should of course
not forget the enormous suffering of one creature who is
cooked alive! The lobster.
First some
fascinating facts about an amazing but little understood
creature.
A lobster is an
inverterbrate crustacean.
Lobsters may live
as long as 100 years, prior to the rise of the lobster
industry lobsters where thought to have lived as long as
145 years.
In a similar way to
dolphins lobsters use complex signals to explore their
environment and also to establish social relationships.
Lobsters carry
their young for none months, their off spring have a
long childhood and adolescence. In their natural habitat
and circumstances, older lobsters have been observed
leading the young walking claw in claw.
Four times each
year they shed their hard outer shell and grow a new
one. Only after she has shed her shell can a
female lobster mate.
Lobsters are able
to regenerate legs, claws, and antennae. Lobsters like
us are either lift or right handed, that is a lobster's
crusher claw can be either on the left or the right.
Lobsters are
remarkable creatures, with highly developed senses, for
instance with thier antennae they can smell chemicals in
the water, they Taste with sensory hairs along their legs. Lobsters can both emit and
detect low frequency sound. They are indeed
sophisticated animals highly adapted to determine
changes in their environment.
Most importantly
they have pain receptors and have complex nervous
systems. In short lobsters feel pain, they cry out when
they are put into boiling water and frantically
thrash their bodies and scrape the sides of the cooking
pot in a desperate bid to escape.
Surely this is
enough to convince anyone that this creature is in pain
as he is boiled alive! If this is not enough to
convince you, you may be surprised to know that in fact
most scientists agree that a lobster’s nervous system is
quite complex. Below are comments by leading scientists:
Neurobiologist Tom
Abrams says lobsters have
“a full array of
senses.”
Jaren Horsley Ph.D.
Invertebrate zoologist who has studied crustaceans for
many years states:
'I
can tell you the lobster has a sophisticated nervous
system that, among other things, allows it to sense
actions that will cause it harm... [Lobsters] can, I am
sure, sense pain.'
In fact lobsters
may feel even more pain than you would in a similar
circumstance. Sometimes before cooking live lobsters are
cut in half, even sliced and diced.
Jaren G. Horsley says:
“The lobster does
not have an autonomic nervous system that puts it into a
state of shock when it is harmed. It probably feels
itself being cut. ... I think the lobster is in a great
deal of pain from being cut open ... [and] feels all the
pain until its nervous system is destroyed” during
cooking.
This animal
undergoes astonishing cruelty to provide
the over privileged with an item of food that is most
certainly not essential.
You would be
outraged it this happened to your cat or dog, or even a
chicken, pig or sheep. Although many people seem
oblivious to the cruelty of factory farmed animals this
particularly heinous act of cruelty would not be
permitted. Why do we allow lobsters, an equally sentient
creature who also feels pain to be boiled alive. Imagine
sitting in a restaurant and asking for a chicken dish
and hearing the screams of your chosen chicken as he is
boiled alive, well you can't can you, yet this happens
to lobsters everyday, millions of them world wide. In
the USA alone 20 million are caught each year.
Lobsters are caught
in a trap, each year thousand of these traps go missing.
Some are fitted with a time releasing lock but many are
not and the lobster is left to starve to death or die as
a result of cannibalism or being washed up onto the
beach
Once trapped they
are hauled from their deep sea environment, their claws
are than bound, they are transported to stores packed
together in tanks, they are than kept in a state of semi
consciousness in thermal cases until required.
Lobsters than meet
the most horrific death you can imagine as they are
boiled alive. Death may take from 15 seconds to as long
as seven minutes.
Animal Aid in their
article The Silent Suffering of Lobsters quote leading chef Gordon Ramsey who explains how killing
lobsters makes him feel good.
"You always
feel better after killing something. I do... stab the
head off a lobster. You feel all the better for it...
God knows how many I've killed... plunge them into
boiling court bouillon, and their tails flip up and they
scream and you can hear their claws scraping on the
sides, and I got great pleasure out of that." (The
Independent Magazine, 12th October 2003)
Animal Aid: The silent suffering of lobsters
Shocking isn't it
that we share this world with people with such cruel
inclinations, unimaginable to me how anyone can derive
pleasure from such cruelty.
Contrary to what
the lobster industry would have you believe the lobster
does not gradually loose consciousness when water is
brought to the boil slowly, in fact as already mentioned
lobsters react by thrashing about, struggling violently
with the increase the temperature.
Dawn Carr,
director of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals
(Europe), says:
"For every cruel thing people do, there is a
compassionate alternative.
This is most
certainly the case with lobsters although experts
consider that there is no humane way to kill a lobster.
The answer than is
simple: do not eat them.
The information
above was gleaned from a number of sources including
those below where you will find more information and
actions you may take.
As individuals
there is
at least one way to help bring about change and that is to stop eating
fish and other aquatic creatures. There are a
number of campaigns you can support. For ideas, campaigns,
petitions and more information please visit the
following
websites
The
life spark in my eyes is in no way different than the
life spark in the eyes of any other sentient being.
~
Michael
Stepaniak, quoted in Joanne Stepaniak, The Vegan
Sourcebook, 1998
References and Links :
Internal
Sentience in crustaceans
External
External links will open into a new window
Lobster Liberation -
Lobsters are Fascinating Animals
Lobster Liberation - Scientific Review Proves That
Lobsters Feel Pain
Global Action Network:
Animals: Lobsters
Put an end to the boiling
of lobsters and other crustaceans - Petition - Sign
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Credit:
Lobster photograph by flick user Bitter Girl
lucky lobster on Flickr - Photo Sharing!
Licensed under
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike
2.0 Generic
Banner photograph by
by
flick user
nattu
It starts right here, in Maldives on Flickr - Photo
Sharing!
licensed under
Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic
Important please note:
I am not an
animal expert of any kind just your average person who
loves animals, all animals, and feels deeply about the
plight of many of our fellow creatures. Neither am I a
writer, or any other expert. Therefore please keep in
mind that the information included in this website has
been researched to the best of my ability and any
misinformation is quite by accident but of course
possible.
Copyright, accreditations and
other matters, please read
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