PETA’S Anti-Fishing Message Dogs Anglers

For Immediate Release:
6 September 2001

Contact:
Dawn Carr – 0208 870 3966

Hinchley Wood — Anglers travelling from London to the Angling South show at Sandown Racecourse will be caught up in controversy when they see PETA’s traffic-stopping, 25-foot-long banner. Featuring a dog with a fishhook stuck through her lip, the banner asks, ‘If you wouldn’t do this to a dog, why do it to a fish?’ PETA’s banner will be flying high:

Date: Saturday, 8 September
Time: 9 a.m. sharp
Place: On the pedestrian bridge over Kingston Bypass Road, just east of
roundabout at Claygate Lane, facing east

Following the banner hang, from 11 a.m. until noon, members of PETA will greet anglers outside Sandown Park, at the Portsmouth Road entrance, asking anglers to toss their tackle in favour of more benign pastimes, and carrying signs reading, ‘Animal Cruelty Is Not a Sport’, ‘Angling Hurts’ and ‘Grow Up!’

As the late Linda McCartney pointed out in a TV spot for PETA, most people would be horrified if anglers did to dogs what they do to fish—impale them in the mouth and yank them into an environment in which they suffocate slowly—all in the name of sport. It is inarguable that fish experience fear and feel pain just as all animals do. According to the late Jacques Cousteau, ‘To reassure one’s conscience, it is said that fish do not feel pain. … Of course, such claims are completely without foundation.’ Dr Donald Broom, professor of animal welfare at Cambridge University, adds, ‘The pain system in fish is virtually the same as in birds and mammals.’

‘Fishing is as cruel as beating a puppy,’ says PETA’s Dawn Carr. ‘If you care about dogs, why don’t you care about fish? Whether you’re talking about a terrier or a trout, all animals treasure their lives and feel pain.’

For more information, including answers to the most common questions about pain in fish, please visit PETA’s Web site www.FishingHurts.com.