benzonar
06-08-2001, 09:27
The Guardian
>
> Last spring, the state of Texas mobilised a squad of park rangers for an
emergency mission by the shores of a reservoir, Lake Palestine. It was the eve
of a great sporting event, the Red Man Cowboy Sporting Division Fishing
Tournament, and an animal rights organisation, Peta, had threatened to dose the
lake with enough tranquilliser to put the fish to sleep.
>
> Newspapers reported the threat. One sweating official accused Peta - it
stands for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals - of "borderline
terroristic methods". The rangers stood guard. But the fish didn't snooze. The
tournament had been scheduled for April Fool's Day. After all, the lake
contained 40bn gallons of water - it would have taken truckloads of sleeping
pills to make a difference. The Texan angling community had fallen victim to a
classic left-field Peta stunt: devious, attention-grabbing and harmless.
>
> The Peta activist behind the trick, Dawn Carr, is now in London. That joke
was on the Texan media, but Carr is serious about Peta's campaign to stop
people fishing. After five years trying to get Americans to lay down their rods
and lines, it's Britain's turn.
"If you wouldn't do this to a dog, why do it to a fish?" reads the
caption on Peta's unpleasant campaign poster, showing the barb of a fish
hook impaling, and tugging at, the cheek of a wide-eyed, suffering dog.
>
> "We've always been opposed to either recreational angling or the commercial
fishing industry because of the intense suffering they cause animals," says
Carr from Peta's Wandsworth offices in south London. "With the billboard image
of the dog we're trying to highlight the fact that many people will extend
compassion and kindness to some animals, while completely ignoring the
wellbeing of others. Even though fish may not be cuddly, like other animals,
they still feel pain and suffering."
>
> The idea that fish may feel pain has long nagged at western consciences. Lord
Byron described angling as, "the cruellest, the coldest, and the stupidest of
pretended sports". But is it so cruel? Are we ready to care about fish? Did
Lord Byron never slip away from his workstation to the canal on a summer
evening with a line and hook and bag of maggots to gaze dreamily at a float
****ed among strands of pond scum?
>
> "At the end of the day you have to re alise that we are not talking about
little people in slimy jackets. We're talking about fish," says Mick Toomer,
the fisheries manager at Gloucester Park in Basildon, Essex. "Angling might not
always be a good thing for the individual fish. But it is good for fish in
general and for the environment. The antis just don't seem to see the other
side."
>
> Gloucester Park waters is a small lake that slices through seven acres of
gently rolling hills a few minutes from Basildon town centre. Yesterday, a
handful of anglers were sheltering from the blistering sun - and the Peta
onslaught - under the willows that line the lake. Umbrellas are positioned at
the anglers' backs and cooler boxes and flasks rest on the banks beside them.
Adults and children peer ahead intently. Matthew Blackburn, 12, the 2000
Basildon junior angler of the year, explains the trouble they go to to
> minimise any pain the fish might feel. "It's only cruel if you don't know
what you're doing," he says.
>
> His father, Darren, says the animal rights activists have got it wrong. "This
poster the animal rights people are putting out has absolutely nothing to do
with fishing. Putting a hook through a dog would be downright cruel. It's
totally different. Fishing is just a great way to relax and the boys learn
about the environment. Its beats roaming the streets and stealing cars, doesn't
it?"
>
> Cliff Crane, a company director, is with his nine-year-old daughter, Anna.
"If my daughter had seen the picture of the dog with the hook in its mouth
before I introduced her to fishing and let her see for herself that it's not
cruel, she would probably never have done it," he says. Anna looks up from
under her baseball cap. "I love it. We've caught seven fish today and put them
all back in again."
>
> A few feet away, a retired electrician, Albert Ovenden, says: "I wouldn't
hurt any animal and don't even like the thought of it. I genuinely believe we
are not hurting the fish. I don't understand why the cruelty-to-animals brigade
thinks it's cruel. It's been going on for centuries."
>
> Centuries, yes, but there is a change in this century: a developing
scientific consensus that fish do, probably, feel pain. Or at least that they
have the physical apparatus to do so. The trouble is, you can't prove it. Fish
don't scream.
>
> "It's not a question there's an easy answer to," says Dr Peter Fraser of
Aberdeen University, an expert in the neurobiology of fish and an angler
himself. "It's hard enough to know if people are feeling pain, and they are
pretty good at telling you."
>
> Some sequences of chemical messages associated with pain which are found in
humans are also found in fish; fish also have "alarm responses", meaning they
react to certain stimuli by fleeing or fighting. "Whether any of these are in
response to pain I don't know," says Fraser.
>
> "There are plenty of documented cases where anglers have hooked fish, had a
broken line, and seen the fish come straight back to try to eat the bait again.
These sorts of studies, and many others, suggest fish don't feel certain sorts
of pain from the hook.
>
> "On the other hand, sticklebacks have spines, and the idea is that they cause
damage to the pike trying to eat them. If the pike was incapable of feeling
pain, what would be the point of the spines?"
>
> The government takes fish pain seriously enough to make scientists who want
to use them (and one species of cephalopod, a kind of octopus) in experiments
subject themselves to the same ethical oversight and form-filling involved in
experiments on mice or rats.
>
> The farm animal welfare council, which advises the government, points out
that the adrenal system, which produces hormones in emergency situations and
senses which are not designed specially for aquatic life, function in similar
ways in fish and mammals. This suggests fish do experience sensations we would
describe as panic, fear, or stress.
>
> "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," says the council. The receptor cells,
neuronal pathways and specialised transmitter substances in the pain system are
very similar in fish to those in mammals."
>
> The RSPCA - which points out that it is an animal welfare organisation, not
an animal rights organisation - finds itself outflanked by Peta on fishing. A
spokeswoman, Lisa Dewhurst, confesses she is weary explaining why the RSPCA
takes a stand against fox hunting with dogs but merely advises anglers to
follow best practice: not using vertebrates as live bait, holding fish in keep
nets for as short a time as possible, using barbless hooks, and keeping a
disgorger handy for extracting hooks from a fish's mouth.
>
> "They are two completely different things," she says. "Hunting with dogs is
hunting with dogs. The dogs are the ones that chase and catch the prey. No
matter what kind of regulations you bring in, you can't force a pack of hounds
to follow a human code of conduct. With fishing, the angler himself is carrying
out the practice, and is perfectly capable of carrying that out in a reasonable
way."
>
> Peta members belong to a particular sub-group of activists: the non-violent
purists. They take an ultra-hard line on the relationship between humans and
animals, namely that everyone should follow a vegan lifestyle. Not only should
we avoid hunting and fishing, not only should we stop eating meat or fish, we
should avoid anything that is produced from animals, including leather, milk
and eggs. We should use humane mouse traps: catch the mouse unharmed, and
transport it some distance away so that it won't bother us, or, in the case of
the centre of large cities, so that it will bother someone else.
>
> But they have not so far been violent or caused physical damage in their
actions, beyond jokes and the kind of psychological shock tactics used in their
hooked dog advert. Earlier this month, Peta's vegan campaign coordinator, Bruce
Friedrich, pleaded with delegates to the International Whaling Commission
meeting in London to eat whales rather than other animals. "Many of the
environmentalists who will blubber this afternoon about the killing of whales
won't hesitate to harpoon buckets of chicken wings on the way home," he said.
"We're obviously in favour of saving whales, but if you're not vegetarian, face
facts: You are responsible for
> far more suffering and deaths than one Japanese or Norwegian whaler."
>
> In another campaign, against the Wendy's hamburger chain, they drove a mobile
billboard to the firm's headquarters featuring a poster with a drawing of a
man's head stuck up his own bottom. The caption read, "No one told Dave that
'Where's the beef?' is a rhetorical question" - a reference to the alleged
blindness of Dave Thomas, the company founder, to the cruelty of the
meat-packing business and the unhealthiness of meat, despite his own quadruple
bypass operation.
>
> Carr would not say how much Peta planned to spend on its European
anti-fishing campaign, but said it would cover angling, including match
fishing, commercial fishing and fish farms. "It's a vegetarian issue, because
we are killing billions of sea animals to eat every year."
>
> Carr acknowledges that animals will not show gratitude if we try to help
them; and that, if humans do not kill or confine them, they will die from
predation, hunger, disease or infirmity in the wild. But she argues that our
humanity gives us a duty to be compassionate to the voiceless. Including fish.
>
> Asked what the Peta line was if you were attacked by a tiger, she says: "Then
you've got a problem, don't you. Clearly you have to defend yourself. But
sticking a fork into a piece of meat is not self-defence."
>
> Last spring, the state of Texas mobilised a squad of park rangers for an
emergency mission by the shores of a reservoir, Lake Palestine. It was the eve
of a great sporting event, the Red Man Cowboy Sporting Division Fishing
Tournament, and an animal rights organisation, Peta, had threatened to dose the
lake with enough tranquilliser to put the fish to sleep.
>
> Newspapers reported the threat. One sweating official accused Peta - it
stands for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals - of "borderline
terroristic methods". The rangers stood guard. But the fish didn't snooze. The
tournament had been scheduled for April Fool's Day. After all, the lake
contained 40bn gallons of water - it would have taken truckloads of sleeping
pills to make a difference. The Texan angling community had fallen victim to a
classic left-field Peta stunt: devious, attention-grabbing and harmless.
>
> The Peta activist behind the trick, Dawn Carr, is now in London. That joke
was on the Texan media, but Carr is serious about Peta's campaign to stop
people fishing. After five years trying to get Americans to lay down their rods
and lines, it's Britain's turn.
"If you wouldn't do this to a dog, why do it to a fish?" reads the
caption on Peta's unpleasant campaign poster, showing the barb of a fish
hook impaling, and tugging at, the cheek of a wide-eyed, suffering dog.
>
> "We've always been opposed to either recreational angling or the commercial
fishing industry because of the intense suffering they cause animals," says
Carr from Peta's Wandsworth offices in south London. "With the billboard image
of the dog we're trying to highlight the fact that many people will extend
compassion and kindness to some animals, while completely ignoring the
wellbeing of others. Even though fish may not be cuddly, like other animals,
they still feel pain and suffering."
>
> The idea that fish may feel pain has long nagged at western consciences. Lord
Byron described angling as, "the cruellest, the coldest, and the stupidest of
pretended sports". But is it so cruel? Are we ready to care about fish? Did
Lord Byron never slip away from his workstation to the canal on a summer
evening with a line and hook and bag of maggots to gaze dreamily at a float
****ed among strands of pond scum?
>
> "At the end of the day you have to re alise that we are not talking about
little people in slimy jackets. We're talking about fish," says Mick Toomer,
the fisheries manager at Gloucester Park in Basildon, Essex. "Angling might not
always be a good thing for the individual fish. But it is good for fish in
general and for the environment. The antis just don't seem to see the other
side."
>
> Gloucester Park waters is a small lake that slices through seven acres of
gently rolling hills a few minutes from Basildon town centre. Yesterday, a
handful of anglers were sheltering from the blistering sun - and the Peta
onslaught - under the willows that line the lake. Umbrellas are positioned at
the anglers' backs and cooler boxes and flasks rest on the banks beside them.
Adults and children peer ahead intently. Matthew Blackburn, 12, the 2000
Basildon junior angler of the year, explains the trouble they go to to
> minimise any pain the fish might feel. "It's only cruel if you don't know
what you're doing," he says.
>
> His father, Darren, says the animal rights activists have got it wrong. "This
poster the animal rights people are putting out has absolutely nothing to do
with fishing. Putting a hook through a dog would be downright cruel. It's
totally different. Fishing is just a great way to relax and the boys learn
about the environment. Its beats roaming the streets and stealing cars, doesn't
it?"
>
> Cliff Crane, a company director, is with his nine-year-old daughter, Anna.
"If my daughter had seen the picture of the dog with the hook in its mouth
before I introduced her to fishing and let her see for herself that it's not
cruel, she would probably never have done it," he says. Anna looks up from
under her baseball cap. "I love it. We've caught seven fish today and put them
all back in again."
>
> A few feet away, a retired electrician, Albert Ovenden, says: "I wouldn't
hurt any animal and don't even like the thought of it. I genuinely believe we
are not hurting the fish. I don't understand why the cruelty-to-animals brigade
thinks it's cruel. It's been going on for centuries."
>
> Centuries, yes, but there is a change in this century: a developing
scientific consensus that fish do, probably, feel pain. Or at least that they
have the physical apparatus to do so. The trouble is, you can't prove it. Fish
don't scream.
>
> "It's not a question there's an easy answer to," says Dr Peter Fraser of
Aberdeen University, an expert in the neurobiology of fish and an angler
himself. "It's hard enough to know if people are feeling pain, and they are
pretty good at telling you."
>
> Some sequences of chemical messages associated with pain which are found in
humans are also found in fish; fish also have "alarm responses", meaning they
react to certain stimuli by fleeing or fighting. "Whether any of these are in
response to pain I don't know," says Fraser.
>
> "There are plenty of documented cases where anglers have hooked fish, had a
broken line, and seen the fish come straight back to try to eat the bait again.
These sorts of studies, and many others, suggest fish don't feel certain sorts
of pain from the hook.
>
> "On the other hand, sticklebacks have spines, and the idea is that they cause
damage to the pike trying to eat them. If the pike was incapable of feeling
pain, what would be the point of the spines?"
>
> The government takes fish pain seriously enough to make scientists who want
to use them (and one species of cephalopod, a kind of octopus) in experiments
subject themselves to the same ethical oversight and form-filling involved in
experiments on mice or rats.
>
> The farm animal welfare council, which advises the government, points out
that the adrenal system, which produces hormones in emergency situations and
senses which are not designed specially for aquatic life, function in similar
ways in fish and mammals. This suggests fish do experience sensations we would
describe as panic, fear, or stress.
>
> "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," says the council. The receptor cells,
neuronal pathways and specialised transmitter substances in the pain system are
very similar in fish to those in mammals."
>
> The RSPCA - which points out that it is an animal welfare organisation, not
an animal rights organisation - finds itself outflanked by Peta on fishing. A
spokeswoman, Lisa Dewhurst, confesses she is weary explaining why the RSPCA
takes a stand against fox hunting with dogs but merely advises anglers to
follow best practice: not using vertebrates as live bait, holding fish in keep
nets for as short a time as possible, using barbless hooks, and keeping a
disgorger handy for extracting hooks from a fish's mouth.
>
> "They are two completely different things," she says. "Hunting with dogs is
hunting with dogs. The dogs are the ones that chase and catch the prey. No
matter what kind of regulations you bring in, you can't force a pack of hounds
to follow a human code of conduct. With fishing, the angler himself is carrying
out the practice, and is perfectly capable of carrying that out in a reasonable
way."
>
> Peta members belong to a particular sub-group of activists: the non-violent
purists. They take an ultra-hard line on the relationship between humans and
animals, namely that everyone should follow a vegan lifestyle. Not only should
we avoid hunting and fishing, not only should we stop eating meat or fish, we
should avoid anything that is produced from animals, including leather, milk
and eggs. We should use humane mouse traps: catch the mouse unharmed, and
transport it some distance away so that it won't bother us, or, in the case of
the centre of large cities, so that it will bother someone else.
>
> But they have not so far been violent or caused physical damage in their
actions, beyond jokes and the kind of psychological shock tactics used in their
hooked dog advert. Earlier this month, Peta's vegan campaign coordinator, Bruce
Friedrich, pleaded with delegates to the International Whaling Commission
meeting in London to eat whales rather than other animals. "Many of the
environmentalists who will blubber this afternoon about the killing of whales
won't hesitate to harpoon buckets of chicken wings on the way home," he said.
"We're obviously in favour of saving whales, but if you're not vegetarian, face
facts: You are responsible for
> far more suffering and deaths than one Japanese or Norwegian whaler."
>
> In another campaign, against the Wendy's hamburger chain, they drove a mobile
billboard to the firm's headquarters featuring a poster with a drawing of a
man's head stuck up his own bottom. The caption read, "No one told Dave that
'Where's the beef?' is a rhetorical question" - a reference to the alleged
blindness of Dave Thomas, the company founder, to the cruelty of the
meat-packing business and the unhealthiness of meat, despite his own quadruple
bypass operation.
>
> Carr would not say how much Peta planned to spend on its European
anti-fishing campaign, but said it would cover angling, including match
fishing, commercial fishing and fish farms. "It's a vegetarian issue, because
we are killing billions of sea animals to eat every year."
>
> Carr acknowledges that animals will not show gratitude if we try to help
them; and that, if humans do not kill or confine them, they will die from
predation, hunger, disease or infirmity in the wild. But she argues that our
humanity gives us a duty to be compassionate to the voiceless. Including fish.
>
> Asked what the Peta line was if you were attacked by a tiger, she says: "Then
you've got a problem, don't you. Clearly you have to defend yourself. But
sticking a fork into a piece of meat is not self-defence."