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irritating neocon for animal rights

by repost
This is only notable for the fact that Jeff Jacoby is a harsh neoconservative, and this was published in a lot of newspapers this week, expressing a sentiment you wouldn't expect.
Catch-and-release fishing is inhumane

JEFF JACOBY, Boston Globe <http://sfgate.com/templates/types/gatemainpages/images/clear.gif> Wednesday, May 14, 2003 <http://sfgate.com/templates/brands/chronicle/images/chronicle.gif>

I'M NOT A VEGETARIAN. I eat fish and fowl. I don't oppose experimenting on animals when necessary for medical research. I like zoos. I have no moral objection to wearing fur or leather. I think it's OK to keep pet dogs on a leash and birds in a cage. And I am no supporter of PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) or its fanatic agenda.

But I do think sport fishing is cruel.

By sport fishing I mean catch-and-release fishing -- fishing for fun and adventure, not for food. I have no quarrel with the man who takes a salmon or trout out of the water and eats it for dinner. What appalls me is fishing for its own sake. I don't doubt that it can be thrilling to drag a fish through the water by a barbed hook in its mouth, or that there is pleasure in making it struggle frantically, or that it is exciting to force a wild creature to exhaust itself in a desperate effort to get free. I don't deny the allure of it all. But finding gratification in the suffering of another isn't sport. It's sadism.

One of PETA's billboards shows a dog with a hook through its lip, and asks: "If you wouldn't do this to a dog, why do it to a fish?" PETA's analogies are frequently tasteless and morally repugnant, but this one is exactly right.

Writing a few years ago in Orion, a magazine about nature and culture, essayist and avid outdoorsman Ted Kerasote opened a piece about the ethics of catch-and-release fishing with a quote from a fellow outdoorsman, "the philosopher, mountaineer, and former angler Jack Turner."

"Imagine using worms and flies to catch mountain bluebirds or pine grosbeaks," Turner told him, "or maybe eagles and ospreys, and hauling them around on 50 feet of line while they tried to get away. Then, when you landed them, you'd release them. No one would tolerate that sort of thing with birds. But we will for fish because they're underwater and out of sight."

I can hear the indignant reply of countless anglers: Fish are different. Fish don't feel pain. The hook doesn't hurt them.

But there is mounting evidence that fish do feel pain. A team of biologists at Edinburgh's Roslin Institute make the case in a paper just published by the Royal Society, one of Britain's leading scientific institutes. Their experiments with rainbow trout prove the presence of pain receptors in fish, and show that fish undergoing a "potentially painful experience" react with "profound behavioral and physiological changes . . . comparable to those observed in higher mammals."

Other studies have demonstrated the marked responses of fish to painful conditions, from rapid respiration to color changes to the secretion of stress hormones. Does this mean that a fish feels pain in just the way we do, or that its small brain can "understand" the painful event? No. It does mean that the ordeal of being hooked through the mouth, yanked at the end of a fishing line, and prevented from breathing each time its body leaves the water is intensely unpleasant and distressing.

Anglers tell themselves that catch-and-release fishing is more humane and nature-friendly than catching fish and killing them. That strikes me as a conscience-salving fib.

"We angle because we like the fight," Kerasote writes. "Otherwise all of us would be using hookless (flies) and not one angler in 10,000 does. The hook allows us to control and exert power over fish, over one of the most beautiful and seductive forms of nature, and then, because we're nice to the fish, releasing them 'unharmed,' we can receive both psychic dispensation and blessing. Needless to say, if you think about this relationship carefully, it's not a comforting one, for it is a game of dominance followed by cathartic pardons, which . . . is one of the hallmarks of an abusive relationship."

I'm not blind to the beauty of fishing. But any sport that depends for its enjoyability on forcing an animal to fight for its life is wrong. Wrong for what it does to the fish. Even more wrong for what it does to the fisher.
In other words, WHY do you imagine there should be some sort of linkage between Jeff Jacoby's "politics" with regard to relationships between humans and his attitude with regard to human cruelty to animals?

Or rather let's take this the other way around. WHY should I trust that somebody who shows concern about human injustice is NECESSARILY concerned with what humans are doing to the environment. That one concern is somehow (miraculously?) going to derive from the other.

I think we need to face this squarely, our various interests and concerns come from many different sources, and those who are our allies in one fight might be our enemies in another. Not pleasant to contemplate, but truths aren't always pleasant. We cannot be sure that we will not have to make hard choices as to what things are MOST important to us.
by Uwe
well, if he has taken this position about fish, then, if he is honest with himself, the next logical step would be criticism of factory farming practices. Pigs are regularly kept in extremely confined spaces where they can't even turn around, and they just have a food trough, and they show signs of going insane. Most hens who produce the eggs not labeled 'free range' are also kept in extremely small cages and are debeaked and end up rubbing off all their feathers because they don't have enough space to extend their wings. This is far more inhumane than eating 'game' or even hurting and releasing game because 100% of their life involves cruel conditions rather than just brief moments.

However, assuming Jacoby is consistent and also produces the cruel treatment of these pigs and chickens, this would be completely incompatible with his neoconservative position regarding economics. Neoconservative favor 'free trade', or unregulated trade both locally and internationally with organizations like the WTO which override local laws.

If he decided to support rules for humane treatment of meat animals, then it would be a slippery slope where next he might consider supporting rules regulating the production of pollution by oil companies which causes asthma and illness in nearby human populations. Or the permittal of use of landmines in the various countries the US intervenes in, or regulation of food purity or labeling of toxic products. About this time he could no longer call himself an neoconservative.
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