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Right now, the Burns brothers export the cod they catch to Japan, China, France, Spain, Denmark, and Norway. The fact that the fish are humanely harvested has not been a big draw for their main buyers, Michael says, but he expects that will change. He and his team have been speaking with various animal welfare organizations to develop new standards and certifications for humanely caught wild fish. “It will become more common,” Michael says. “A lot of people out there are concerned with where their food comes from and how it’s handled.”
Meanwhile, the vast majority of the trillions of fish slaughtered annually are killed in ways that likely cause them immense pain. The truth is that even the adoption of humane slaughter methods in more progressive countries has not been entirely or even primarily motivated by ethics. Rather, such changes are driven by profit. Studies have shown that reducing stress in farmed and caught fish, killing them swiftly and efficiently with minimal struggle, improves the quality of the meat that eventually makes it to market. The flesh of fish killed humanely is often smoother and less blemished. When we treat fish well, we don’t really do it for their sake; we do it for ours.
“I’ve always had a natural empathy for animals and had no reason to exclude fish,” Brown says. “At that park [in Melbourne], they didn’t have any concern that there were fish in there and they might need some water. There was no attempt to save them or house them whatsoever. I was shocked by that at that age, and I still see that kind of callous disregard for fish in people today in all sorts of contexts. In all the time since we discovered the first evidence for pain in fish, I don’t think public perception has moved an ounce.” Read more: www.smithsonianmag.com...
originally posted by: burdman30ott6
a reply to: chr0naut
Science is a bit more complex than that.
www.sciencedaily.com...
Obviously they respond to stimuli, but they lack some features (such as a neocortex) which is instrumental in science's understanding of the sensation of "pain."
originally posted by: burdman30ott6
a reply to: InTheLight
Blood is the great spoiler. The process I have always used for fish is to cut the gill rakers or cut the tail behind the anal fin (all fish have a major vein that runs there) and then ideally bleed the fish out while it is in the water on a rope or in a live well. The fish will slowly bleed out and the heart will pump the majority of the blood out of the fish, leaving the meat much fresher and less quick to spoil. If the fish is sea run, it should be gutted within a few minutes of death to reduce the migration of intestinal worms through the stomach lining and into the meat. They start migrating to the exits immediately upon the host's death.
Never club a fish. It introduces stress hormones (adrenaline) which impart a taste in the meat as well as speeding up spoilage. I don't own a fish priest nor do I advocate their usage. If someone is sensitive to the point where they want their fish killed before it bleeds out and I'm "guiding" them, I will capitulate in so much as I will take a fillet knife and scramble the fish's brain with it in a single stroke, but that's not necessary as far as I am concerned.
this practice causes "severe physiological stress that they (the fish) often die of shock."
"It's called the food chain. Do they get upset when a lion eats a gazelle?" Or, when a Grizzly rips open a salmon?
originally posted by: ketsuko
a reply to: chr0naut
Yes, but an animal can feel pain and then again, they can feel pain. Seriously, if a snake felt pain the same way we humans do, they wouldn't be prone to sit atop a heat rock long enough to give themselves second and third degree burns like they have been known to.
It isn't that they don't feel pain. They do, but they clearly don't feel it the same way a human does. How many people do you know who would expressly sit atop a hot rock long enough to blister themselves or worse? And we're not talking about a searing temp, more of a gradual heat burn.