Animal Advocacy The next frontier for animal welfare:Fish

[Lou]

I could not find a suitable thread to put this in. I wasn't even sure what forum it belongs in.
Anyway another great article from Vox

The next frontier for animal welfare: Fish​

Fish are farmed in higher numbers than any other animal, but they haven’t gotten much attention from the animal welfare movement — until now.​

I was looking for a couple of good quotes to include here to prompt people's interest in reading this. But I think I would have ended up copying and pasting every paragraph. Maybe this is all I need, tho.

But one animal raised and killed in higher numbers than any other hasn’t quite become encompassed in that growing moral circle: fish.​

Reading this, it is mostly about Animal Welfare. and after a while I found myself thinking. Gosh, I'm glad I'm a vegan and this doesn't concern me. Which pretty much sums of my most of my feelings about the Animal Welfare movement.

Then... its part of a spectrum isn't it. Hardly anyone turns vegan overnight. Maybe for some the first step is a concern for animal welfare. So maybe this article might prompt someone to care about Fish. But maybe because its about animal welfare and not actually freeing animals - is why I found it hard to find the right place to put this in.

The author seems to think that plant based fish products have a lot of potential. I know that at Whole Foods they have Tuna Free Tuna.

 

[Brian W]

At ICA here, they have fishless fingers. Not for me - there are two foods whose flavour I do not want to taste from plant-based alternatives, and they are eggs and fish. Yeuch!

 

[anarchist100]

I could not find a suitable thread to put this in. I wasn't even sure what forum it belongs in.
Anyway another great article from Vox

The next frontier for animal welfare: Fish​

Fish are farmed in higher numbers than any other animal, but they haven’t gotten much attention from the animal welfare movement — until now.​

I was looking for a couple of good quotes to include here to prompt people's interest in reading this. But I think I would have ended up copying and pasting every paragraph. Maybe this is all I need, tho.

But one animal raised and killed in higher numbers than any other hasn’t quite become encompassed in that growing moral circle: fish.​

Reading this, it is mostly about Animal Welfare. and after a while I found myself thinking. Gosh, I'm glad I'm a vegan and this doesn't concern me. Which pretty much sums of my most of my feelings about the Animal Welfare movement.

Then... its part of a spectrum isn't it. Hardly anyone turns vegan overnight. Maybe for some the first step is a concern for animal welfare. So maybe this article might prompt someone to care about Fish. But maybe because its about animal welfare and not actually freeing animals - is why I found it hard to find the right place to put this in.

The author seems to think that plant based fish products have a lot of potential. I know that at Whole Foods they have Tuna Free Tuna.

What's really bad is how they cook lobsters, PURE EVIL!

 

[Ahimsa]

What's really bad is how they cook lobsters, PURE EVIL!

Yes, evil is the correct word. In fact anyone who causes harm unnecessarily and deliberately for the purpose of some form of gratification is carrying out an evil act, be they boiling a live lobster, or sexually abusing someone. I do tend to think though that sea life poses a bit of a vegan dilemma. In many ways fish etc are killed and eaten unnecessarily, making it wrong to do so. However, with so many poor indigenous people in the world where fish are part of their staple diet and crops difficult to grow and obtain, perhaps for financial reasons, then fishing would not be morally wrong.

 

[Brian W]

Yes, evil is the correct word. In fact anyone who causes harm unnecessarily and deliberately for the purpose of some form of gratification is carrying out an evil act, be they boiling a live lobster, or sexually abusing someone. I do tend to think though that sea life poses a bit of a vegan dilemma. In many ways fish etc are killed and eaten unnecessarily, making it wrong to do so. However, with so many poor indigenous people in the world where fish are part of their staple diet and crops difficult to grow and obtain, perhaps for financial reasons, then fishing would not be morally wrong.

Absolutely. Survival needs are not choices.

 

[Ahimsa]

Absolutely. Survival needs are not choices.

Well in another sense they could be. For example, if you have to eat sea life then you could choose the least developed, such as a sardine rather than whale meat. How necessary is the need, how justified and how proportionate, are just some of the things that have to be considered to differentiate between moral and immoral when it comes to eating fish/sea life.

 

[Lou]

Well in another sense they could be. For example, if you have to eat sea life then you could choose the least developed, such as a sardine rather than whale meat. How necessary is the need, how justified and how proportionate, are just some of the things that have to be considered to differentiate between moral and immoral when it comes to eating fish.

Isn't that speciesism?

Also not that I am an adherent to staying on topic but the article is about animal welfare not abolitionism. And more specifically about industrial fish farming. although it touched upon commercial fishing practices as well.

The vegan view is that it doesn't really matter how the animal dies. Besides, Is boiling alive that much worse than slowly suffocating? The animal welfare peeps are concerned with how the animal lives AND dies.

 

[Ahimsa]

Isn't that speciesism?

Also not that I am an adherent to staying on topic but the article is about animal welfare not abolitionism. And more specifically about industrial fish farming. although it touched upon commercial fishing practices as well.

The vegan view is that it doesn't really matter how the animal dies. Besides, Is boiling alive that much worse than slowly suffocating? The animal welfare peeps are concerned with how the animal lives AND dies.

Yes, it is speciesism, but when it comes to fish, I don't think we're ever going to fully get away from it.

 

[Danielle]

I don't think about what if I had to eat fish to survive, because I don't need to. The point is to avoid causing harm whenever possible.

 

[Lou]

I could not find a suitable thread to put this in. I wasn't even sure what forum it belongs in.

Huh. Deja Vu.

Alaska’s Fisheries Are Collapsing. This Congresswoman Is Taking on the Industry She Says Is to Blame.

Mary Peltola won her election by campaigning on a platform to save the state’s prized fisheries. A powerful fishing lobby is standing in her way.

www.politico.com

 

[PTree15]

Huh. Deja Vu.

Alaska’s Fisheries Are Collapsing. This Congresswoman Is Taking on the Industry She Says Is to Blame.

Mary Peltola won her election by campaigning on a platform to save the state’s prized fisheries. A powerful fishing lobby is standing in her way.

www.politico.com

I remember covering fishing industry issues back in the 1980s as a reporter with the same worries about trawlers and overfishing, etc. The trawling lobby was and is strong.

 

[Lou]

Maybe this congresswoman has a chance. its seems like trawling is not good for Alaskans.

 

[Tom L.]

Definitely an area which needs (and hopefully will now get) more attention. It took me several years after I stopped eating meat to stop eating fishes. I still haven't figured out if it was because my family fished or if there was an additional reason.

I posted about this some time ago: back in ~2006, a couple whom I knew found about 30 goldfish in their outdoor koi pond one summer. I don't think we ever figured out where they came from: eggs on plants they bought; dumped there by someone whose goldfishes bred... Anyhow, although their koi are fairly good-sized, they didn't eat the goldfish (or not all of them, anyway). Back in the late 1960s to early 1970s, I had kept a small aquarium, and knew about keeping fresh-water fish- so I took in 5 of them (I think mostly to make up for the 2 goldfish I had as a child who didn't live as long as goldies can). I was planning from the beginning to find homes for them with folks who would otherwise have bought goldfish from a pet store, and eventually found homes for 2 pairs (one of them died after a few years).

It is widely believed that fishes do not suffer; some believe that they are not "aware" at all, because their brains lack certain highly-developed areas that birds and mammals have (a cortex). But after observing fishes for quite some time, I believe this is a misconception. For example: while at first, the 5 of them tended to gather into a small group and go to the far side of the tank when I approached, they soon learned that food often appeared seconds after I came near and would come to the surface instead. Similarly, my father had a tank of guppies back in the 1960s, and they came rushing to the surface at the front/center when someone walked near ("like piranhas!", Dad sometimes said...) I observed other behaviors as well.

 

[Lou]

Definitely an area which needs (and hopefully will now get) more attention. It took me several years after I stopped eating meat to stop eating fishes. I still haven't figured out if it was because my family fished or if there was an additional reason.

Fish was the last thing I gave up on my vegan journey.
For me it was because I hadn't given up the idea that people required some animal protein. And it took a while for me to accept that fish lives mattered. Then you add the health of the ocean to the calculations and it's a pretty obvious call.