why is it that many people that consider them veg*ns perceive fish to be outside the realm of veg*nism? is it because fish factories are not as publicized as factory farming? or that we can relate more to animals that look more like us? do people think fish cannot feel pain? it truly confuses me.

i can't help but wonder if the reasons are selfish (perhaps selfish isn't the best word but it's how i view it) - that people think eating fish is extremely healthy. i certainly can't imagine that people have a tougher time giving up the taste of fish over beef.

but really, what are the reasons?

on the flip side, i can think of many reasons why people would (should?) be opposed to it. environmentally, we overfish many areas which has been leading to extinction of species and reduction of diversity. fishing is also very wasteful, as many fish species are caught simply during the act of trying to catch something else. and of course, the fish obviously "choke" or to death or "drown" when they are caught and yanked out of the water.

so this i ask.. why do so many people eat fish? and especially, why does it seem that many veg*ns do?

I think fish do not seem like real animals, bc they have no facial expressions, don't make noise, and look and live so differently. So it is easier to try to rationalise that hurting them is not as bad. I have done that. I learned to like fish right after I went veg. I started eating it bc they had really fresh fish at the restaurant where I worked, and all my parents ever gave me as a child was nasty stuff.

I then learned the difference of all these kinds of fish and could make good recommendations to customers. I didn't like eating it, I knew I was temporarily only semi-veg, but it was so unlike other kinds of meat, it wasn't like really eating meat, and it was tasty.

But I eventually gave it up, and still think about it once in a while.

We've all been brought up to believe that fish can not feel. Although some would say the same about a cow. My theory is why kill something if you don't have to. I was walking with my mom the other day and there was a weed growing up out of the sidewalk, she went to pick it, and I said "let it live!" Hehe. I mean, why kill it just cause you can, right?

Maybe I'm changing the subject but -- schools -- has anyone else ever noticed that fish swim in them? The schools have a pattern almost -- each fish looks precisely placed --as if the school is the main entity which one notices and each fish is a sub-entity. They all turn together AT EXACTLY THE SAME TIME. How on earth do they do that? I wonder if anyone knows? Not only that, but get stick your leg in their way -- and they will all veer off in another direction -- it appears to me to be IN UNISON. As if the school was the entity and the fish were sub-entities.

Are they all deciding the same thing at the same time? Or is there a leader who decides which way to veer, and the rest play follow-the-leader? It's like INTANTANEOUS the way they all "switch" directions, the same exact way. One moment they are swimming one way, and then INSTANTLY they are all swimming another way. Like they are a single entity.

They seem to do it so effortlessly. Anyone who has practiced military drills or even marching band drills, knows that it take a bit of practice to get a bunch of people to all switch directions at the same time. Anyone who tries to march around like this all day gets real sick of it. But fish seem to do it all effortlessly. Does that mean they are smarter than us?

Birds and bats do that too. It is amazing, I agree.

Maybe the whole fish thing comes from the people who become vegetarians solely for health reasons. You know, the whole fish is healthier than chicken or beef thing. That's the only thing I can think of. Not to mention, that the CHURCH brainwashed people into thinking that fish was not meat by saying no meat on Fridays but people were allowed to eat fish!

I've also noticed that while fish are anatomically more human-like than are, say, insects, mullosks, arachnids, or crustaceans, that fish, and all the ambient-temperature vertebrates, like frogs and snakes and turtles, don't seem to be emotionally fearful of us, the way the warm-blooded animals are -- the birds and the mammals. The warmblooded run away the moment they notice us getting too close; the ambient-temp vertabrated don't always run away from us -- their behavior in this regard is more like that of the mullosks, crustaceans, insects, and arachnids.

Birds seem to flock with slightly less precision than fish school, and ruminant mammals seem to herd with slightly less precision than birds flock. While there seems to be some degree of precise patterning, formation-walking, in herd animals like buffalo or zebras, group-foraging animals like gorillas seem, relatively, to be rather disorganized in their grouping pattern.

My theory is that humans were not long ago similar group-patterned animals, as gorillas and chimpanzees are (tho organgutans aren't) and that that we are not in the process of losing this inherted trait -- some of us have inherted the tendency to be part of a group, some of us haven't. Perhaps we are also substituting non-geographic groups for what were once strictly small-area geographic groups -- due to communication being so advanced, as a result of things like -- writing, messenger service, mail service, and more recently, telephone, broadcast media, and computer networking.

I've noticed the same of fish, Soilman. It's remarkable, isn't it? There's so much to observe that leaves us with so many questions and so few answers.

Originally posted by Michael
We've all been brought up to believe that fish can not feel. Although some would say the same about a cow. My theory is why kill something if you don't have to. I was walking with my mom the other day and there was a weed growing up out of the sidewalk, she went to pick it, and I said "let it live!" Hehe. I mean, why kill it just cause you can, right?

i couldn't agree more michael :) i got annoyed with a vegan once because they killed a fly. it seems silly but why kill it if you don't have to, just to show that you can? to show that humans are superior to other species? we certainly don't act like it a lot of the time..

"there was a weed growing up out of the sidewalk, she went to pick it, and I said "let it live!" Hehe. I mean, why kill it just cause you can, right?"

Weeds growing between sidewalk cracks, depending upon the kind of weed, are strong enough to lift the concrete slab off the ground, and flex it enough to cause it to crack, if the other end adheres strongly to the ground. Someone walking on a lifted slab, can also be enuf to cause it to crak -- concrete has very high compression strength, but amazingly low flex strength.

Once one slab is lifted higher than the next slab, you can have a dangerous situation where, people not realizing on slap is lifted from its normal position, strike the higher slab with a foot in the process of moving the foot forward during walking, causing their stride to be broken, their bodies to be thrown off balance, and a fall -- onto concrete -- which, having high compression strenght, and very little compression, tends to cause even more damage to the person falling, than a fall onto soil. Because children have shorter legs, and shorter leg-lifts during their stride, than adults, and are more likely trust humanmade things to be as usual, and as safe as usual (they can easily distinguish sidewalks as human-made) they are even more likely to have their stride broken and to fall, consequent to a lifted slab, than an adult. I think that generally, weeds growing between sidewalk cracks, should be routinely removed. I also think it is best to use mechanical methods rather than herbicides, as is quite common in many place.

I've actually heard similar arguments for most seafood. I think Michael hit the nail on the head. I mean, what seems more cuddly and cute: a baby chick or a shrimp? People have tried reasoning that clams and oysters have no central nervous system (I don't know if this is true or not) as an effort to get to to return to eating seafood.

I agree. If you don't need to kill it, why?

What I can't stand are my meat eating friends who refuse to dissect things or wear leather because of cruelty... yet, they eat meat.

B4S, does this mean you didnt go back to eating fish?

I think fish are animals too. i dont think its right fish basically is meat i always considered them almost the same thing. fish are also living things so what makes them different just because they are better for you?

Fish have "feelings" too.
See my post here http://www.veggieboards.com/boards/showthread.php?s=&postid=62477#post62477

I was walking with my mom the other day and there was a weed growing up out of the sidewalk, she went to pick it, and I said "let it live!" Hehe. I mean, why kill it just cause you can, right?

That made me laugh because that's so much like me too. A lot of people think I'm being silly when in the summer I don't allow my daughter to pick flowers just to smell. I tell them "the flower is prettier alive then dead." Why pick it when she can lean down and smell it just as easily.

You know, the funny thing is that weed is still there. I watched it turn brown and shrivel as the weather turned cold. I worried that because of me it was dying a slow painful death rather than a quick and painless death. Every time I see it I wonder if the weed is screaming at me - "kill me now!" *lol*

^^^^^^^^^^Weed lover! :tame:

Originally posted by FemmeDemonica
People have tried reasoning that clams and oysters have no central nervous system (I don't know if this is true or not) as an effort to get to to return to eating seafood.

I agree. If you don't need to kill it, why?
The phylum molluska (which includs snails, octopi, clams, etc.) varies widely, but if I remember from bio in HS, it is the the first group to evolve faily complex nervous systems. They don't have brains but ganglia- large nervous control centers spread around the body. How conscious the various species are is probably something we can only speculate about.
Nervous System and Sensory Capability

Molluscs have a relatively complex nervous system, commonly with a number of discrete ganglia, serving the cephalic, pleural and pedal regions, in addition to a network of interconnecting nerve cords. Sensory ability in some molluscs (notably the cephalopods) is considerable, with a specialised stellate ganglion, chromatophores, mechano and chemo receptors as well as large, complex eyes. The eyes of the giant squid are the largest in the animal kingdom, approaching the size of dinner plates. Statocyst organs of equilibrium are generally present, as are ostharadia, which effectively monitor quality of water entering the organism. Neurosecretory cells with hormone products, including growth hormone are also known [Hickman et al. 1997]. The octopi are thought to be among the most intelligent of all invertebrates, with a mental capacity likened to that of a domestic cat [Bavendam, 1991]. It has recently been demonstrated that squid can successfully locate and capture transparent prey in the water by means of a specialised polarisation vision [Shashar, et al. 1998].
http://www.teaching-biomed.man.ac.uk/bs1999/bs146/biodiversity/mollusca.htm

How conscious the various species are is probably something we can only speculate about.

And to most of us I'm sure it's irrelevant.

Someone I know is essentially pesco-vegan. He doesn't eat red meat, poultry, dairy, or eggs. However, he does eat fish. I asked him about this, and he said, "I eat low on the food chain." I didn't get a chance to ask him why he thinks fish are low on the food chain because he went on little rant about how cars are wasteful (and I agreed with him on the cars.)

My sister-in-law once argued that fish were not animals! Carrotvision (hi hubby!) tried explaining basic taxonomy to her, about the different kingdoms etc. But she wouldn't agree that fish are animals! Either she is really stupid or she was being very stubborn.

I always get the "You eat fish though, right?" when I say I'm a vegetarian.

My mother doesn't consider fish to be in the same league as mammals, I think it mostly has to do with:
1. a lack of basic biology knowledge
2. the fact that she is a strict Catholic, and doesn't eat "meat" on fridays, but is allowed to have fish on fridays. (not saying that all Catholics don't recognize fish as animals, just that my mother takes the Bible a little too literally and doesn't get/want info from any other source)

I think that there is enough scientific data out there to prove that fish feel pain. I don't care how much pain they can or can't feel, or whether or not they can have grandiose debates on the meaning of pain, or if they can even understand what is happening to them. I agree with what's been said, if you don't have to kill something, then why should you?

I must admit that the fish I've caught do suffer... but not for long! I kill them and eat them, and they taste very good. Indeed, the best food on the planet is without doubt fresh halibut with a little bit of lemon juice on it. Whatever parts I don't eat, the dogs go absolutely crazy for. The bears love them too. So I know I'm not the only animal around who likes to eat fish. Even other fish love to eat fish. What's the problem?

Ugh! :mad:

Curious..do you eat other animals too??