Watching Our Water Ways

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) has raised objections over a planned demonstration of fish-throwing at a veterinary conference.

The idea was to invite fishmongers from Pike Place Market to toss fish around as part of their appearance at the conference of the American Veterinary Medical Association next month in Seattle. It’s part of the act at the market.

Now PETA is saying if the demonstration is to be held at all, the fish-tossers should throw rubber fish.

After watching KCPQ (Channel 13)’s story last night about PETA’s objections to the demonstration, I was ready to question PETA’s logic, if not the sanity of the group. PETA already has something of a flaky reputation.

While watching the TV news report, I was literally hooting at what seemed to be the notion that PETA was objecting to the fish-throwing at the Pike Place Market.

“These fish are dead!” I said laughing. “How can PETA say tossing fish around is disrespectful? If you want to talk about disrespect, spend some time on a fishing boat, where fish are rounded up in a net and dumped into the hold. If you want to talk about disrespect, visit a salmon hatchery, where fish are sliced open to remove the eggs. If you want to talk about disrespect, think about killing the fish, cooking the fish, cutting the fish into pieces and eating it!”

OK, I didn’t really say all that in so many words. But that was the essence of my logical argument. I thought PETA was really missing the boat, so to speak, by arguing about fish-tossing, when people have been making an honorable living from fishing for thousands of years.

Then I went to PETA’s Web site and read the press release and letter to the veterinary group. I realized that PETA had not missed these greater points at all. It was the news reports that came up short. Reporters, both television and print, were so amused by PETA’s objections to fish-tossing that they failed to pick up the nuance of PETA’s argument.

KCPQ may have realized the inadequacy of the report, as it held an in-studio interview this morning with PETA’s president Ingrid Newkirk.

It turns out that PETA is not objecting to fish-tossing in general — at least not so much in this letter. The group continues to object to the killing and eating of all animals, and believes that net fishing is a cruel way for fish to die. Organizers were making the point that veterinarians — charged with protecting and treating animals — should not celebrate such cruelty by tossing fish about in an amusing way.

PETA promotes veganism. It is pretty well established that eating lower on the food chain has less impact on the environment. I find the argument against meat-eating logical, and I have cut back my personal consumption of meat and chicken to some degree.

But some of PETA’s campaigns are so removed from common sense that a large number of people refuse to take the group seriously. PETA organizers acknowledge that they do crazy things to get attention, but maybe they should work harder on their nuanced message. To be effective, PETA representatives must make a connection with people who don’t already agree with them.

As hard as PETA tries, the message frequently seems off the mark, especially if the group is trying to reach logical people — let alone hard-bitten folks who believe in human domination over other species.

PETA’s letter protesting the fish-tossing demonstration includes this: “Surely the AVMA would not describe an event as ‘fun, educational and inspiring’ if the animals being tossed around were lambs, hamsters, or cats.”

I would have to say that most of us don’t eat hampsters or cats. Personally, the idea of tossing dead bodies does not bother me much, as long as these animals were treated well while they were alive.

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Tags: American Veterinary Medical Association, fish-tossing, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, Pike Place Market

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 10th, 2009 at 8:53 am by cdunagan and is filed under Education, Fish, Fishing interests, Recreation, Salmon. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.