[Ed. Note: Please read the
article and or
PDF: What About Fish?]
Call or write The Rotary Club of Edmond, Washington, and
politely ask that they stop promoting or working with anyone who
promotes the killing of and cruelty towards animals. Let them
know that it is not acceptable to encourage children (or anyone)
to kill or be cruel to fish or any other animals.
The Rotary Club of Edmonds
PO Box 115
Edmonds, WA 98020
phone (425) 771-1744
To call or email the Club Leadership - http://www.ismyrotaryclub.org/club/clubLeaders.cfm?D=5030&ClubID=115&xsl=cl7.xsl
INFORMATION / TALKING POINTS
The Edmonds Rotary Waterfront Festival has partnered with the
Willow Creek Fish Hatchery and will be providing a shuttle bus
from the festival to the hatchery, where kids under 12 can hook
the animals and then have them killed and gutted for free.
Fish are not swimming vegetables; they are animals with
developed nervous systems and brains capable of processing pain
and fear. Author of the 2010 book Do Fish Feel Pain? and Penn
State professor Victoria Braithwaite says, “We now know that
fish actually are cognitively more competent than we thought
before—some species of fish have very sophisticated forms of
cognition…In our experiments we showed that if we hurt fish,
they react, and then if we give them pain relief, they change
their behavior, strongly indicating that they feel pain.”
"There is a perception that fish have simple brains and are
incapable of feelings, and this has somehow made them different
from birds and mammals when it comes to our concerns for their
welfare," she said. "But we now have strong evidence that
suggests fish are more intelligent than previously thought and
their behavior more complex."
In the journal Fish and Fisheries, biologists Calum Brown, Keven
Laland, and Jens Krause write, "Gone (or at least obsolete) is
the image of fish as drudging and dim-witted pea-brains, driven
largely by 'instinct'…Although it may seem extraordinary to
those comfortably used to pre-judging animal intelligence on the
basis of brain volume, in some cognitive domains, fishes can
even be favorably compared to non-human primates."
Thank you for everything you do for animals!