ELF - reg. required
Go fishing. Take a kid fishing. Go out for a seafood dinner. That is the best retaliation for PETA's latest quirky, angler-insulting, ridiculous anti-fishing campaign.
| Tenderize a trout with a claw hammer! |
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, who declared last Saturday "Fish Amnesty Day," are seeking to make every day fish amnesty day and now are urging fishermen to turn in their rods and reels, to hang up their tackle. I can't imagine anyone who enjoys fishing actually surrendering his or her gear to PETA for use in anti-fishing demonstrations. Most fishermen would burn their gear rather than donate it to PETA. As a reminder to outdoorsmen--as if they need it--PETA opposes hunting, fishing and trapping and seeks to eradicate all of those activities. PETA also opposes dog mushing, rodeo and the circus. More recently, PETA seems to have adopted the notion everyone in the world should become vegetarians. The group recently poked fun at actor John Goodman and opera singer Luciano Pavarotti, whom they consider overweight, and demanded they change their eating habits. Now PETA has concluded fish feel pain and are being tortured when caught, even by fishermen who catch and release.
| I'm sure they do. If somebody dragged me out of my room using a hook, I'd feel pain, too. But PETA's making the assumption that I care, which doesn't necessarily follow from the mere fact of the critter's pain. |
This is just another absurd example of PETA equating a lower species on the food chain with humans. PETA's premise is that all animals are warm and cuddly. The organization even has someone on staff with the title of "Fish Empathy Project Manager."
| I wonder if, after sitting and watching her guppies all day, the Fish Empathy Project Manager goes home and eats her young? |
"There's nothing sporting about luring defenseless animals to their deaths with the promise of food," Fish Empathy specialist Karin Robertson said in a PETA press release.
| It works better if you offer them food. I tried offering them money once, only got two bites all day, and one of 'em didn't pay me back... |
Sometimes PETA supporters just make the looniest statements.
| Noticed that, did ya? Not much gets by you! |
On the group's Web site, Sylvia Earle, described as the former chief scientist for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, is quoted as saying, "I never eat anyone I know personally. I wouldn't eat a grouper any more than I'd eat a cocker spaniel. They're so good-natured, so curious."
| "Flounders, on the other hand, they're the hoodlums of the fish world, always skulking around. I'd eat a flounder in a flash! And all my grouper friends would, too! |
Grouper?
| They're really fun-loving. For fish. |
"You know," she said, "fish really are sensitive. They have personalities. They hurt when they're wounded."
| They eat their young. They eat each other's young. If one of 'em's wounded, the others will kill him... |
How does she know?
| Good question. I try not to answer that kind of question, because people who identify with fish frighten me. I'm sensitive that way. Not as sensitive as a grouper, mind you, but pretty sensitive. |
PETA has a long way to go to persuade Americans to hang up their fishing tackle.
And you thought the LLL couldn't get any loonier. |
