“PETA has launched its Fish Empathy Project in behalf of the more than 18 billion fish killed for U.S. dinner tables each year.”
http://www.peta.org/mc/NewsItem.asp?id=5881 (2005, they are still launching new initiatives in many States and Federally)
“Fish are not swimming vegetables. They feel pain just like other animals, like we do,” says Robertson, who uses that name professionally but has legally changed her name to GoVeg.com, which links to PETA’s Web site. GoVeg.com is on her credit cards and drivers license, and she uses that name away from work as “a really light-hearted way to start a conversation about a very serious issue.” She cites research in the United Kingdom that reported in 2003 that trout had nervous system receptors in their heads and responded to damaging stimuli in ways that showed “pain,” not just reflex.
PETA also opposes fishing for the reasons that waters are loaded with contaminants and that eating fish is unhealthy. Its targets include commercial fishing and fish farms. It also opposes angling for sport, a pastime that the American Sportfishing Association says generates $116 billion in economic impact annually. In PETA’s view, fishing is no sport at all.
This year Robertson has gotten no takers in letters to sports editors of 200 newspapers asking them to drop their fishing columns. “It’s only a matter of time before we look upon cruelty to fish in the exact same way we look upon cruelty to dogs and cats.”
Popularity of fishing in decline
If papers won’t take fishing columns out of sports sections, Robertson wants a “more appropriate section like the crime report or the obituaries.” That is heresy to those who see fishing as wholesome outdoor activity, a way for families and friends to bond and a boost to efforts to preserve fish and keep waters clean. Rose, a fishing advocate, doesn’t view fishing as sport, either, but for a different reason: “It’s much more important than that. I think it’s a spiritual thing. It doesn’t mean you’ve got to be real formal or high-minded about it, but I think it’s much deeper than just a casual activity.” Rose describes himself as an “advocate of fish,” and says, “If fishing were eradicated, in the end there would be a lot less people caring about fish.”
“But there has been a decline in the popularity of fishing in recent decades. According to a report by the Sporting Goods Manufacturers Association, the number of people in the USA who fish declined from 58.4 million in 1987 to 47.9 million in 2004.”
“Making a day of it with friends. PETA is working on the kids, too. Robertson has gone to public areas near schools (most recently in Texas, New Mexico and Arizona), accompanied by an assistant in a fish costume, to pass out “Fish are Friends, Not Food” stickers and Fish Flakes trading cards, which carry PETA’s messages about cruelty and contamination.”
http://www.usatoday.com/sports-peta-protest
Are you on the same political page as the PETA gaggle? I know this is tiresome, but I am going to continue to link ecobots to your possible gentler eco tendancies and political leanings. Strange bedfellows with consequences. Oh, and you should know by now that Catch & Release is not going to work either. No Kill does not matter. The loons have refined it down to the hook point piercing the lip…ouch! That right there cuts to the point (so to speak).
SwittersB & Exploring 