Catholic bishops in the U.K. want to reinstate year-round meatless Fridays, which sounds great to me, except for one thing: They still seem to think that fish are swimming vegetables.
Like all other animals killed for food, fish are sentient beings who value their lives. Research on fish intelligence abounds, revealing that fish use tools, tell time, sing, and have impressive long-term memories and complex social structures. Fish also create cognitive maps that allow them to navigate through vast expanses of water.
More importantly, like other animals, fish feel pain. Renowned scientist Victoria Braithwaite noted, "[T]here is as much evidence that fish feel pain and suffer as there is for birds and mammals."
Fish used for food are hooked, suffocated, crushed, impaled, cut open and gutted, all while still conscious, and they feel every agonizing second.
For some arresting video footage of fish slaughter, watch the fish portion of the Paul McCartney video, "Glass Walls," here:
Not eating animals is a smart, compassionate decision, regardless of whether those animals are furred, feathered or finned. As actor James Cromwell is fond of saying, "We don't need to eat anyone who would run, swim or fly away if she could."
What better time than World Week for the Abolition of Meat to let fish off the hook?
Follow Bruce Friedrich on Twitter: www.twitter.com/brucegfriedrich
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It's been ten days since the post went up, and no one has commented in the past few days, so I'm going to close comments.
Cheers,
Bruce
Brute makes me want to channel Ted Nugent, and I don't even like Nugent, FFS.
What in my post causes you to say that it's "ranting" or "demagoguery"? Your post seems to want to close off discussion, and you even resort to name-calling and cursing. Your little temper tantrum does precisely what you claim (with no evidence at all) that I do. I appreciate you reading and taking the time to post, but you seem not to be interested in dialog--just ranting and complaining, without substantiation. Interesting.
Cheers,
Bruce
You seem kind of angry. Breathe. Relax. Eat a nice veggie burger. There you go, cowboy.
Bruce has a very unfortunate habit of doing exactly what FaunaAndFlora has described. Let's see how long before he does it again.
The very basis of your screed is wrong so the rest of it isn't worth reading.
Why do you think the basis is whatever you think it is? I think you're reading things that aren't there.
Thanks for taking the time to read it and reply, though!
Bruce
It'd be different if you were doing something akin to telling a lacto-ovo about the suffering endured by chickens in large-scale egg farms, since they actually care about the well-being of the animals in the first place.
Let's make a non-meat example using the logic of your rebuttal (We'll hypothetically transmogrify you into a natural remedy guru for this purpose).
Replace "meat" with "drugs" and your argument becomes:
"My point is that drugs are drugs, and that if you're going to give up drugs (whatever the reason), you should give up all drugs."
That argument is acceptable to convince someone who abstains from all types of recreational and/or medical drugs or natural stimulants for health reasons to quit drinking coffee. It'd be totally useless for getting someone with type I diabetes who gave up meth because it ruined their life to quit taking insulin though.
http://whyveganoutreach.blogspot.com/2011/05/worth-repeat-kenny-torrella-on.html
excerpt:
For 2.5 years I had been telling people I was vegan if the subject came up. Now if people ask I say I'm vegetarian, and it makes a world of a difference. When I used to say I was vegan, people would immediately say some kind of variation of, "That's awesome, but I could never do that myself." Now when I say I'm vegetarian, people become more open and tell me about other vegetarians they know, vegetarian foods they've tried, how they've considered going vegetarian, or they had been vegetarian in the past and want to get back into it.
Thanks for reading and posting!
Bruce
see-- http://newtheologicalmovement.blogspot.com/2011/03/why-we-abstain-from-meat-but-not-from.html
Thanks for the post.
Bruce
This is a quote, directly from PeTA's comic book aimed at children:
"Until your daddy learns that it's not 'fun' to kill, keep your doggies and kitties away from him. He's so hooked on killing defenseless animals that they could be next!"
And this is the cover of the comic, titled, Your Daddy Kills Animals!:
http://adland.tv/ooh/peta-your-daddy-kills-animals-leaflet
And this is the comic they made to turn small children against their mothers, titled Your Mommy Kills Animals!:
http://current.com/1rsru4c
A direct quote from that issue:
"There are terrible people who cause our furry friends to die that way every day.
And guess what? One of those terrible people is your Mommy!"
It is genuinely hard to even imagine something more shameful than that. They literally hand those comics out to unsuspecting children outside of events such as the Nutcracker. People deserve to know the truth about PeTA. I hope this makes it clear that they have absolutely no business lecturing anybody else about ethics.
Of course, PETA would find it acceptable to abuse children because they're only HUMAN. It's only ANIMALS we can't "abuse" (e.g., simply by using them for food).
PETA is a thoroughly disgusting organization that has pulled the wool over the eyes of a lot of well-meaning people who sincerely care about animal welfare. But animal welfare isn't REALLY what PETA is about. It's an extremist "animal rights" organization founded and run by a woman (Ingrid Newkirk) who has a lot of really, really warped ideas (understatement), including, apparently, utter loathing for the entire human race.
http://news.stv.tv/scotland/east-central/240622-feeding-kids-meat-is-child-abuse-controversial-billboard-goes-up-in-scotland/
Even more to the point, not eating meat is supposed to be a sacrifice for Catholics to remember the sacrifice of Jesus. It has nothing to do with whether eating meat is good, bad or otherwise. It was simply chosen because it was considered a hardship to not eat it.
Instead of recognizing that not eating meat on Friday has NOTHING to do with PETA-style AR/vegan dogma (and, in fact, not eating meat as a penitential practice makes NO SENSE unless eating meat is recognized as a DESIRABLE activity), Pope Brucius the First wants to re-jigger Catholic theology to be a reflection of his own vegangelical religion. Tsk tsk.
The difference is the Catholics are not trying to force non-Catholics to follow their religious beliefs.
Look we have been at war WITH PROTESTANTS!
watch this my hobby is collecting gold cups and wealth for me I AM THE GOD ON EARTH!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ck02k6d-_nI
Fish are animals and deserve consideration. They have the same mechanisms with which to feel pain and fear.
There are mother fish who protect their young, there are fish who use various tricks to hide themselves from predators, they fight for their lives when they are pulled up by the thousands in huge trawler nets. Let's choose a kinder way to nourish ourselves and let these animals live out their lives in the ocean.
That mosquito you just slapped? Yep. Felt pain.
Have you ever seen a stop-motion image of a plant getting hacked at? It reacts just the same as an animal, only much slower.
We are consumers. We kill other organisms to live. Get used to it.
Detecting an aversive stimulus and reacting to it does not imply an organism felt/perceived it. An individual neuron can detect if it has been damaged, navigate the environment, and respond to light in much the way that a plant does, but it's very unlikely that it feels pain.
The ability to perceive pain would actually be a pretty good benchmark--if the mechanism for doing so were actually well-defined.
As for saying that ALL animals feel fear and pain...that's taking a bit of a leap as well. Fear is the result of activation of the fight/flight response in humans and it's effect on our cognitive systems. The fight/flight response is the highly conserved survival adaptation since it improves an organisms ability to flee or defend itself. The emotional component is not required for this adaptation to be effective. So the benchmark is not the ability to exhibit a response that we would consider fearful, it's the cognitive capacity to reflect on one's own state.
Because, for sure, other predators are not going to make this choice.