Ask anyone if they think that cruelty to animals is OK and they’ll say no – but are they being truthful? If they eat meat, they’ll insist that the meat they eat is ‘high-welfare’, but 85 per cent of the UK’s farmed animals endured their shortened lives on brutal factory farms, so nearly everyone who says their meat is ‘high welfare’ is telling porkies.
Fishing is growing in popularity and there are similarly hollow boasts from those who sit by the riverside. According to the Angling Trust, thousands of young people have been awarded rod licences over the last couple of years and angling influencers now share drone footage and photos with their hundreds of thousands of followers on Instagram.
Many of these new kids on the block don’t actually eat the fish they catch. Instead, they do ‘catch and release’ fishing, where they throw the fish they caught back into the river or stream. Some people believe this is a compassionate practice – the Times described catch and release fishing as a ‘peaceful art’, which is helping young people deal with anxiety.
But for the fish, the experience is far from peaceful or artistic. One moment they’re swimming along happily and then they’re caught on a hook, terrified and in physical pain.
As soon as they’re hauled out of the water, they begin to suffocate. If they were caught from deeper waters, their eyes bulge, their organs swell up and their blood vessels burst.
The fishes’ experience doesn’t necessarily get any better when they return to the river. Studies have found that fish that are caught and then returned continue to suffer severe physiological stress and one study showed that up to 43 per cent of them die of shock soon after they’re chucked back into the water. A peaceful art? It’s a while since I’ve heard anything so ridiculous.
Angling apologists have sworn blind for decades that fish don’t feel pain but this spin has been disproved. Professor Donald Broom, a scientific advisor to the government, said: ‘The scientific literature is quite clear. Anatomically, physiologically and biologically, the pain system in fish is virtually the same as in birds and mammals.’ A European Union scientific panel has also found that, yes, fish do experience pain and fear.
Poor fish – just as they get tangled up in nets, they’re also caught in oceans of hypocrisy and virtue-signalling. Pescatarians proudly give up meat to take a stand against the suffering and slaughter of land animals but continue to eat fish.
Others proudly buy tuna with a ‘dolphin-safe’ label, feeling smug about saving dolphins even as they eat tunas. Some fish are more equal than others, it seems.
People sign online petitions saying it’s cruel to keep dolphins and whales at Seaworld but nevertheless continue to eat fish and chips. Most ridiculously of all, people boast that they’ve stopped using plastic straws to save fish even as they refuse to stop eating fish to save fish.
Why is there so much animal cruelty? A big reason is that the nastiest stuff is kept out of sight and out of mind. Slaughterhouses and factory farms are hidden from public view so we don’t see the horrors that go on there. When a racehorse gets injured on a course, the organisers drape a tarpaulin around it so we don’t see it get shot in the head. Dairy farmers don’t put photos of their wailing mother cows on cheese packaging.
As for catch and release anglers, they simply hide the truth from themselves. As long as they don’t see the fish struggle and die after they’ve chucked it back into the water, they don’t have to think about the suffering and death they’re inflicting. They can carry on with their peaceful art.
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