whisky-dave wrote:

On Wednesday, 20 December 2017 18:32:12 UTC, Rod Speed wrote:
wrote
Tim Lamb wrote

The fishing club here have an inbuilt hatred of Eastern Europeans
based on the belief that they take caught fish to eat.

I would have thought that was the point of fishing!

In practice most prefer to torture the fish by sticking
a barbed hook in their mouth, yanking them out of
the water, putting their foot on them while getting
the hook out and then putting them back in the water.

I've not seen proper fisherman put their feet on the fish.
There's no evidence fish feel pain but they do feel discomfort.


Wonder why those who hate seeing foxes chased
by a horde of hooray henrys on horses with dogs
don't give a damn about the torture of fish.

Most do, but they can't prove that the fish feel pain which makes it
difficult to ban fishing.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/release...0808123719.htm


Fish do not feel pain the way humans do, according to a team of
neurobiologists, behavioral ecologists and fishery scientists. The
researchers conclude that fish do not have the neuro-physiological
capacity for a conscious awareness of pain.

Up until 20 years ago the same brand of religious prejudice combined
with unjustified but dogmatic scientific speculation led to exactly the
same conclusion being declared about newborn babies; so surgical
procedures were done on them without anaesthetic. Since babies cry
anyway, it was not obviously evil to the people doing it. Now we don't
believe that; the evidence is unchanged.

Bottom line, the idea that fish don't feel pain is convenient but
speculative.


--

Roger Hayter