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PETA: Fish feel -- so don't eat them
Animal-rights group is hoping for a sea change
By MIKE LEWIS
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER
When it comes to fish, Paul Matson proudly asserts he's a stone-cold, unempathetic killer in a fleet town teeming with like-minded murderers.
"I stalk them, surround them, kill them and sell the flesh," he said while sitting on a bar stool at The Highliner, the bar at Fishermen's Terminal. "And I couldn't care one little bit what the rest of the world thinks about the hierarchy of sentient beings."
Karen Ducey / P-I
Mark, left, and Conan Johansen sell fish from their boat, the F/V Cora J at Fishermen's Terminal. The brothers hold their dog, Dolly, in higher regard than the fish they catch.
Mainly, he couldn't care less what People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals thinks. Told that PETA yesterday launched its "Fish Empathy" campaign, an attempt to get people to think of wild and farmed fish as intelligent beings as they do of their pets, Matson snorted.
"The problem," he said, citing declining salmon prices, "isn't that people eat fish. It's that they don't eat enough of it."
Announced yesterday, PETA's fish-empathy campaign was prompted by recent scientific reports showing that fish have more complex brain patterns than previously thought. For example, one Oxford University study revealed that fish have detailed memories about surroundings.
Other studies point to evidence that social structures among some fish species are more elaborate then originally believed.
Armed with the knowledge that consumers, in part, helped change the tuna industry on the dolphin-safe issue, PETA now wants people to stop differentiating between the water-borne mammals they don't eat and the aquatic water breathers they do.
"We want people to think of the suffering of the fish," said Stephanie Bell, a Seattle resident and PETA's regional animal cruelty caseworker. Bell, 35, said up until 10 years ago, she, too, ate fish and meat. That was before she learned of the suffering of the animals to be consumed.
"It's something many people have not stopped to think about."
The push to change people's perception of fish -- viewed often as little more than silent, cold, nerveless, swimming plants -- marks a departure in strategy for the animal rights group while falling within its overall goal to stop the human consumption of other animals.
The campaign, which likely will include holiday picketing at seafood restaurants in Seattle and elsewhere, won't just focus on the ethics of eating animals but also on evidence that fish, sometimes with high mercury levels, for example, isn't always a healthy alternative to red meat and poultry.
"We are asking people to look at everything they eat in a holistic manner," Bell said. "Is it good for you? Is it good for the environment? Very often, the water these fish live in isn't fit for human consumption."
Even if the water were healthy, PETA representatives said, people simply wouldn't hook and eat their pets, would they?
Seattle brothers Mark and Conan Johansen fish for salmon on the 40-foot F/V Cora J with Dolly, their West Highland terrier. While it's true they wouldn't eat Dolly, "unless we run out of fish," Mark joked while glancing at the sleeping dog on the cabin floor, neither brother has an ethical problem treating some animals as food and others not.
Mark, a 40-year-old with a degree in biology, said he's not offended by PETA, he just strongly disagrees. "I'm for humane killing for consumption only," he said. Conan, 38, allowed that he sometimes thinks about animal death when he's cleaning shrimp, but then he gets over it.
"Sometimes, I hate to kill it," he said. "But I will eat it."
In Seattle, both sides have a claim to a sympathetic community. In a recent Men's Fitness magazine survey, Seattle was voted the second-best city in the country for vegetarians, with two-dozen no-meat and vegan restaurants and grocery stores. (The first was San Francisco.) And a number of animal rights groups, such as the Humane Society, have sizable local affiliates.
But the fishing fleet, too, as with lumber, has ocean-deep roots in local commerce, culture and lifestyle. Indeed, as Matson noted, fishing didn't become a part of the community only after Seattle was founded in 1869.
Said Matson as he left the Highliner to return to the F/V Anita for today's salmon season: "Remember, people were fishing here for thousands of years before Seattle ever existed."
P-I reporter Mike Lewis can be reached at 206-448-8140 or
Animal-rights group is hoping for a sea change
By MIKE LEWIS
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER
When it comes to fish, Paul Matson proudly asserts he's a stone-cold, unempathetic killer in a fleet town teeming with like-minded murderers.
"I stalk them, surround them, kill them and sell the flesh," he said while sitting on a bar stool at The Highliner, the bar at Fishermen's Terminal. "And I couldn't care one little bit what the rest of the world thinks about the hierarchy of sentient beings."
Karen Ducey / P-I
Mark, left, and Conan Johansen sell fish from their boat, the F/V Cora J at Fishermen's Terminal. The brothers hold their dog, Dolly, in higher regard than the fish they catch.
Mainly, he couldn't care less what People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals thinks. Told that PETA yesterday launched its "Fish Empathy" campaign, an attempt to get people to think of wild and farmed fish as intelligent beings as they do of their pets, Matson snorted.
"The problem," he said, citing declining salmon prices, "isn't that people eat fish. It's that they don't eat enough of it."
Announced yesterday, PETA's fish-empathy campaign was prompted by recent scientific reports showing that fish have more complex brain patterns than previously thought. For example, one Oxford University study revealed that fish have detailed memories about surroundings.
Other studies point to evidence that social structures among some fish species are more elaborate then originally believed.
Armed with the knowledge that consumers, in part, helped change the tuna industry on the dolphin-safe issue, PETA now wants people to stop differentiating between the water-borne mammals they don't eat and the aquatic water breathers they do.
"We want people to think of the suffering of the fish," said Stephanie Bell, a Seattle resident and PETA's regional animal cruelty caseworker. Bell, 35, said up until 10 years ago, she, too, ate fish and meat. That was before she learned of the suffering of the animals to be consumed.
"It's something many people have not stopped to think about."
The push to change people's perception of fish -- viewed often as little more than silent, cold, nerveless, swimming plants -- marks a departure in strategy for the animal rights group while falling within its overall goal to stop the human consumption of other animals.
The campaign, which likely will include holiday picketing at seafood restaurants in Seattle and elsewhere, won't just focus on the ethics of eating animals but also on evidence that fish, sometimes with high mercury levels, for example, isn't always a healthy alternative to red meat and poultry.
"We are asking people to look at everything they eat in a holistic manner," Bell said. "Is it good for you? Is it good for the environment? Very often, the water these fish live in isn't fit for human consumption."
Even if the water were healthy, PETA representatives said, people simply wouldn't hook and eat their pets, would they?
Seattle brothers Mark and Conan Johansen fish for salmon on the 40-foot F/V Cora J with Dolly, their West Highland terrier. While it's true they wouldn't eat Dolly, "unless we run out of fish," Mark joked while glancing at the sleeping dog on the cabin floor, neither brother has an ethical problem treating some animals as food and others not.
Mark, a 40-year-old with a degree in biology, said he's not offended by PETA, he just strongly disagrees. "I'm for humane killing for consumption only," he said. Conan, 38, allowed that he sometimes thinks about animal death when he's cleaning shrimp, but then he gets over it.
"Sometimes, I hate to kill it," he said. "But I will eat it."
In Seattle, both sides have a claim to a sympathetic community. In a recent Men's Fitness magazine survey, Seattle was voted the second-best city in the country for vegetarians, with two-dozen no-meat and vegan restaurants and grocery stores. (The first was San Francisco.) And a number of animal rights groups, such as the Humane Society, have sizable local affiliates.
But the fishing fleet, too, as with lumber, has ocean-deep roots in local commerce, culture and lifestyle. Indeed, as Matson noted, fishing didn't become a part of the community only after Seattle was founded in 1869.
Said Matson as he left the Highliner to return to the F/V Anita for today's salmon season: "Remember, people were fishing here for thousands of years before Seattle ever existed."
P-I reporter Mike Lewis can be reached at 206-448-8140 or
i sure hope she has better hygiene than that
