The Battlelines are being drawn

[kc]

Hi all,

You may have seen comments made during the election campaign about the ultra green movements plans to target fishing as the next animal rights battleground.

The first shot has now been fired...extract from today's Sydney Morning Herald..........

Off the hook November 18, 2004

Animal-rights activists have launched a campaign arguing that fish are intelligent, sensitive animals no more deserving of being eaten than a pet dog or cat.

AP reports that the Fish Empathy Project reflects a strategy shift by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals as it challenges a diet component widely viewed as nutritious and uncontroversial.

"No one would ever put a hook through a dog's or cat's mouth," said Bruce Friedrich from PETA. "Once people start to understand that fish, although they come in different packaging, are just as intelligent, they'll stop eating them."

The campaign is in its infancy and will face broad scepticism. Major groups, such as the American Heart Association, recommend fish as part of a healthy diet while some academics say it is wrong to portray the intelligence and pain sensitivity of fish as comparable to mammals.

"Fish are very complex organisms that do all sorts of fascinating things," said University of Wyoming neuroscientist James Rose. "But to suggest they know what's happening to them and worry about it, that's just not the case."

PETA, with its headquarters in Norfolk, Virginia, has campaigned for years against sport fishing, challenging claims by Rose and others that fish caught by anglers do not feel pain. The group also has joined other critics in decrying the high levels of mercury or other toxins in many fish and the pollution discharged by many fish farms.

The Empathy Project is a departure in two respects: it attempts to depict the standard practices of commercial fishing as cruel and seeks to convince consumers that there are ethical reasons for not eating fish.

"Fish are so misunderstood because they're so far removed from our daily lives," said Karin Robertson, 24, the Empathy Project manager and daughter of an Indiana fisheries biologist. "They're such interesting, fascinating individuals, yet they're so incredibly abused."

The project was inspired by several recent scientific studies - widely reported in Britain but little-noticed in the United States - detailing facets of fish intelligence. Oxford University researcher Theresa Burt de Perera, for example, reported that the blind Mexican cave fish is able to interpret water pressure changes to construct a detailed mental map of its surroundings.

"Most people dismiss fish as dim-witted pea-brains. ... Yet this is a great fallacy," wrote University of Edinburgh biologist Culum Brown in the June edition of New Scientist.

"In many areas, such as memory, their cognitive powers match or exceed those of 'higher' vertebrates, including non-human primates." Chris Glass of the Manomet Centre for Conservation Sciences in Massachusetts led another recent study, showing how North Sea haddock developed abilities to avoid trawlers' nets.

"There's no doubt that fish of all shapes and forms are capable of learning fairly complex tasks," Glass said. "They can learn from their environment and experience." Yet Glass declined to endorse the don't-eat-fish appeals.

"We don't want to be caught between warring factions," he said. "We're interested in helping the fisheries industry do a responsible job." To press their argument, PETA activists plan demonstrations starting next month at selected seafood restaurants nationwide. PETA will also urge changes in commercial fishing practices, for example proposing that trawler crews stun fish before cutting them up.

Friedrich questioned why there is popular support for sparing marine mammals - dolphins and porpoises - yet minimal concern for species like tuna, "whose suffering would warrant felony animal cruelty charges if they were mammals".

Fish-welfare rules would be a new realm for US commercial fishermen. The National Fisheries Institute, which represents them, has pledged to help sustain fish stocks but its members have never faced cruelty regulations regarding their catch. "It's irresponsible to discourage people from eating fish at a time when doctors and dietitians advise eating it twice a week," said institute president John Connelly. "If anything, we should be eating more fish." Friedrich acknowledges the difficulty of changing long-held customs, but thinks his project is worthwhile. "We'd rather go too far than not far enough," he said.

[jimbob]

If only they knew what happens to some of the vermin arround here EG GRINNER

[cod_botherer]

Most people dismiss People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals as dim-witted pea-brains

[DICER]

Hopefully this topic will die a silent death....so many people eat fish and they are so tasty. PETA may protest at restaurants, but they will be laughed at.

Stun guns + salt water + human ....very smart thinking, NOT!! Perfect circuitry. It would take out a deckie or two, not to mention the fish!!!

DICER

[Glug]

Pigs, cows, chickens have all gone though the same arguments about being eaten, people still eat them. The main point here for Rec Fishers is pain and suffering.

I believe, a few years back one Australian girl was found guilty of causing pain and suffering to prawns, she was putting them on a hot plate for fun. If this is true the courts have already accept that prawns feel pain, it is how, why and how much pain is inflicted that counts.

The first test case the animal libers manage to get into court will decide the future of fishing from this angle. It has to come, I just hope it is not me they pick on.

I also hope it will die a silent death

[SeaHunt]

Why do they make such a big deal about how intelligent they are #???
Who cares, that doesn't change how good they taste. Pigs are as at least as intelligent as dogs, and we scoff millions of them down. # #8)

This Bruce Friedrich guys sound like a complete and utter d@#khead, found this on the net. # >
PETA’s director of vegan outreach, Bruce Friedrich, nakedly exposes his views -- and everything else. Arrested in London in July 2001 for streaking Buckingham Palace with the words “go vegan” painted on his body, Friedrich specializes in confrontation. He threw a glass of water at London’s visiting mayor in Washington, DC when he didn’t like the mayor’s answer to a question about pigeon food. Friedrich also spent over a year in prison for attacking an Air Force fighter plane with a hammer.
Friedrich believes sport hunters should be viewed “with the same revulsion we presently reserve for Nazi doctors and slave traders.” He spearheads PETA’s absurd “Jesus Was a Vegetarian” campaign. Friedrich has even denounced teenage animal-rights activists who dare to question the appropriateness of violent protest.

Timothy McVeigh “should not be allowed to take even one more life,” wrote Friedrich, urging the terrorist’s warden to serve the condemned prisoner only meatless meals. When McVeigh opted for a vegetarian “last meal,” Friedrich proclaimed that the mass murderer’s decision to abstain from meat “groups him with some of the world’s greatest visionaries, including Albert Schweitzer, Gandhi, Leo Tolstoy and Albert Einstein.”

[CHRIS_aka_GWH]

why was I given the wrong gut?

the one I've got is capable of digesting (breaking down & absorbing) within 12hrs complex protein strands into amino acids & peptides & has at least two additional organs to assist the breakdown of fatty acids. My body can then sort the bewildering number of these chains & process them to rejuvenate everything from fingernails to nervous tissue capable of self generation of electrical impulses.

Why can't I eat grass like the bovines dammit - that stuff just drops out the other end untouched. #???

chris

[devocean]

Its all about the survival of the fittest. Im sure shark parliment is sitting right now and are having a meeting to discuss human rights and why they shouldnt eat us. Are these people serious? What si the world coming to?

[Sportfish_5]

FFS

[mini696]

Personally I dont like PETA's methods during protests. They are aggressive and angry people, which I believe is contradictory to their stated goals. That is my experience with them.

Mickk

[agnes_jack]

This Fella's is only the beginning!
Prepare to defend your rights!

Tony > > >

[Render]

There is a single common factor that unifies every hard-core 'anti' group.

Fanaticism.

The so-called 'cause' they support is irrelevant. Regardless of whether it's racism, animal cruelty, fur trade, vivisection... these deranged fanatics all have the same common purpose: to force everyone else to comply with what they believe.

That's it... that's the bottom line. It has nothing to do with concern for animal welfare or racial equality, but everything to do with foisting their agendas on mankind.

To them, any means are justified by the ends. These are the precise same order of people who would have been strutting round in Gestapo and SS uniforms last century. Or accusing anyone who would disagree with them of Communism during the McCarthy era of the US government. The same insane breed of diseased mind that would have put a human being on the rack in the name of the Inquisition during medieval times.

The causes may change, even the methodology. But the streak of deranged fanaticism that is these people and their peers has always remained the same. These are the truly dangerous, divisive people in our societies today.

Thankfully, most people realise they're a bunch of farkin teapots and ignore them.

Cheers,

R

[freefish]

I always wonder if these people were put in the situation where there were 1000 people & food enough for 500 l.e. ongoing starvation would they only fight for the vegetarian food & not the edible protein. Would they starve for their principles? Violent ratbag protests usually seem to be fueled with a full stomach.Remember a great proportion of the world'd population is hungry most of the time. They should try their protests in third world countries & see their reception.

[bignick]

Ah yes, the old "Rent-A-Crowd" is back in town. They truely are the mouse that is, for some strange reason, allowed to roar. The issues of Refugees or Land Rights For Gay Whales must be on the backburner this week. These people should be treated with the contempt they so richly deserve and horse-whippped to the horizon. Whilst trumpeting their puritanical self-righteousness to anybody who will listen, these same left-leaning, chemically dependant abstract art lovers with highly questionable hygeine habits and dodgey sexuality would be much better served if they first gave their own back yard a good clean out. In the daytime, they telll us how to live our lives, whilst at night, they come down from their privileged fully funded high horse and indulge in the same social and moral decadance they so publicly deride. I have had dealings with many of this type in the past, and, believe me, they are nothing short of oxygen theives and a total waste of space. As the old saying goes, "Those in glass houses should pull the shutters down".

Cheers,
BIGNICK.

[kc]

No disagreement from this little black duck regarding the general sentiment..............just these dickheadss get a write-up in the Sydney Morning Herald & we get left having to justify ourselves....hmmm!!

Just about time we fight fire with fire....do we continue to ignore these type of comments and hope they just go away or start batting on the front foot for a change??

Regards

KC