The last few years have seen a strong rise in awareness of how the animals we raise for food are treated. Numerous laws have been passed in several states in an attempt to make life less hideous for animals in factory farms.
California's Prop 2, which passed in 2008, not only did away with gestation crates for pigs and painfully small crates for veal calves, it also was the first law to specifically address birds. Hens, raised in California for their eggs, will no longer be subjected to life inside battery cages. Animal advocates saw the passage of Prop 2 as a huge victory, and it is.
But what about the sea animals we eat? What about fish? Should we take their suffering into consideration? Are they just seafood, or should fish have rights?
I can see heads at Fox News exploding.
But if you think only rights here that matter are fishing rights, consider this:
Mercy For Animals, a Chicago-based non-profit group, just released a hidden camera investigation inside a Dallas county fish slaughter facility called Catfish Corner. The video is stark and harrowing. It shows workers using pliers to pull the skin off fish while they're still alive, and live fish having their bodies cut in half and their heads ripped off.
The most recent scientific evidence strongly suggests that fish feel and process pain much as mammals do. So isn't this a clear case of cruelty to animals?
Mercy For Animals approached the Dallas County District Attorney's office with their video to ask just that question. The D.A. refused to file charges, citing the limitations of animal cruelty laws of Texas.
Texas isn't the only culprit, it turns out. There are no laws in the United States that define cruel treatment of marine life.
So to answer the question: yes. Fish are animals, and animals have rights. Especially the right not to be skinned alive, or to be cut in half while fully conscious.
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He used a light to attract the fish but the first thing it attracted was water moccasins. After the excitement of that, he got down to catching fish. He "gigged" a big one and as it came out of the water, it cried out. I have no idea how the sound was made but it came from that fish. I had him take me back to the house. I haven't fished since then.
http://www.livescience.com/animals/090325-animal-sex.html
It's our moral obligation to protect all species, we'll be gone soon and our cognitive enterprise has no right to subject them to our inconsistent ethical atrocities we already inflict upon our own species. They'll continue without the necessity for courtrooms and cops. The fittest survive, that is the natural law. To each their own. There is no kosher way to kill, and you cannot put a Great White Shark in Jail. We have the power to preserve harmony and balance on this planet for the time that we're left here. A blip in the spectrum. The preservation of all species requires an ecoli breakout upon humans perhaps, we're just too greedy. We can start by appreciating that when flesh eats flesh it should be a fair fight, between animals themselves. Plants will die and can be harvested fairly before death. Eating animals is basically inhuman since we've evolved to survive without them as a food source. It's pathetic. Methane production from farmed animals contributes to global warming at a rate of diminishing returns greater than any benefit from the process to us and a sustainable planet. The approach of PETA campaign activists is atrocious. The issue of enforcing laws and governing life with guns is archaic. Respect and give back for what we take. Empathetic consciousness.
Vegan for Life!
Please point to which constitution declares this to be the case. While I don't condone cruelty, this is patent malarkey. Animals don't have rights. Sorry.
The term nociception is used to refer to the detection of injurious stimuli by the nervous
system, injury which may or may not lead to the psychological experience of pain.
Nociception is a universal characteristic of animal life. It is how animals avoid situations that could injure or kill them. In contrast, pain is a psychological experience of the conscious mind. The conscious mind resides in part of the brain that fish and marine invertebrates do not possess.
Cutting a fish's head off is the single most effective way to kill it (or you can cut its gills and let it bleed out). If there is a more "humane" way, please tell us.
"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
Until he extends the circle of his compassion to all living things, man will not himself find peace. It is man's sympathy with all creatures that first makes him truly a man.
At the same time the man who has become a thinking being feels a compulsion to give to every will-to-live the same reverence for life that he gives to his own. He experiences that other life in his own. He accepts as being good: to preserve life, to promote life, to raise to its highest value life which is capable of development; and as being evil: to destroy life, to injure life, to repress life which is capable of development. This is the absolute, fundamental principle of the moral, and it is a necessity of thought. Albert Schweitzer
Fanned and faved!
Evidence from the science community is mounting that, like animals, plants are also capable of feeling pain, thinking, and defending themselves. I suggest "The Lost Language of Plants" by Buhner and "The Secret Life of Plants" by Tompkins and Bird. Plants are capable of communicating with each other, defending themselves with toxins made to order, and remembering which animals hurt them, including humans.
Plants can think and remember:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10598926
Plants recognize their relatives and form communities:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_8076000/8076875.stm
Plants can fake illness to deter predators:
http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/1708770/first_discovery_of_plant_that_fakes_illness/index.html
Plants have learned to manipulate behavior of insects for self-protection:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8383577.stm
Plants can also manipulate behavior of insects to insure reproduction:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8632814.stm
With respect to eating plans, nature fortunately provided us with one that respects the ethical treatment of both plants and animals. A description and references regarding what nature evolved humans to eat can be found in "The Original Diet."
Roy Mankovitz, Director
http://www.MontecitoWellness.com
A research organization
My search took me into the fields of ethnobotany, primatology, zoology, evolutionary biology, and toxicology. As a result of that research, I feel confident in answering your question.
The analogy your proposed is between skinning a fish alive, and mowing grass. I agree there is a fundamental difference because the mowing of grass does not kill it – it actually makes it stronger. Nature designed grass to be “mowed” by ruminants and other herbivores, so mow away.
Now try these variations on your analogy, where I do a few substitutions.
1. Ripping a living plant out of the ground so that you can get to the root and eat it.
2. Ripping out the embryos of a living plant (seeds), and eating them.
3. Instead of a fish, it is a shrimp being peeled.
4. Instead of grass, it is a prized orchid being cut from its root at its prime.
Get the picture? Our culture interferes with our nature, and natures provides the answers to all of these questions.
The whole issue is framed in ridiculous, sentimentalist human terms. Life feeds on life. It's a basic reality of existence. However, this process need not be disrespectful, nor need it be wantonly cruel.
The mere fact that you have to ask that question is indicative of how morally bankrupt we are as a society.
Surely ALL animals have the "right" not to be skinned alive, no?