Should we be more humanitarian towards the fish we eat?

[Angrboda]

In most of the world, it is accepted that if animals are to be killed for food, they should be killed without suffering. Regulations for slaughter generally require that animals be rendered instantly unconscious before they are killed, or death should be brought about instantaneously, or, in the case of ritual slaughter, as close to instantaneously as the religious doctrine allows.

Not for fish. There is no humane slaughter requirement for wild fish caught and killed at sea, nor, in most places, for farmed fish.

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Let’s assume that all this fishing is sustainable, though of course it is not. It would then be reassuring to believe that killing on such a vast scale does not matter, because fish do not feel pain. But the nervous systems of fish are sufficiently similar to those of birds and mammals to suggest that they do. When fish experience something that would cause other animals physical pain, they behave in ways suggestive of pain, and the change in behavior may last several hours. (It is a myth that fish have short memories.) Fish learn to avoid unpleasant experiences, like electric shocks. And painkillers reduce the symptoms of pain that they would otherwise show.

Victoria Braithwaite, a professor of fisheries and biology at Pennsylvania State University, has probably spent more time investigating this issue than any other scientist. Her recent book Do Fish Feel Pain? shows that fish not only are capable of feeling pain, but also are a lot smarter than most people believe. Last year, a scientific panel to the European Union concluded that the preponderance of the evidence indicates that fish do feel pain.

Why are fish the forgotten victims on our plate? Is it because they are cold-blooded and covered in scales? Is it because they cannot give voice to their pain? Whatever the explanation, the evidence is now accumulating that commercial fishing inflicts an unimaginable amount of pain and suffering.

~ Ethics in the Real World: 82 Brief Essays on Things That Matter, by Peter Singer

It's estimated that a trillion fish are killed each year by rather inhumane and far from instantaneous methods. Suffocation, mostly. What do you think? Humanitarian crisis, or tempest in a teapot?

[Minimalist]

but also are a lot smarter than most people believe.

Shit.  It isn't apparent that most people are smart.

[WinterHold]

I always believed that boiling Lobsters is an inhumane practice. They sure do feel pain.

[The Grand Nudger]

If they're in rearing tanks they can be rendered unconscious by the batch, they'll still die of suffocation.  Beyond that, we can take them out in petty much the same way that cattle go out with a spike.  

Hard to find anyone in a position to do either.  Meanwhile, we've collapsed our wild stocks and demand can only increase.

[LadyForCamus]

Sushi be so dang good tho...😛

[Nakara]

I always believed that boiling Lobsters is an inhumane practice. They sure do feel pain.

Indeed. You can quickly dispatch them with a knife to the head before tossing them into the water. There's no danger of bacteria forming if it's done in quick succession.

Same with fish. When I went salmon fishing we brought a club. Catch a fish, give it a whack to knock it out, then cut the gills.

There's no need to make our food suffer.

[Minimalist]

You can quickly dispatch them with a knife to the head before tossing them into the water.

I think that is mentioned on Page 4 of the Mafia Trainee Handbook!

[vulcanlogician]

I chose the option that they deserve a humane death. But I was toying with "other." Being extracted from the sea and suffocated is far more human than being made to live in a stall in which one cannot turn around for one's entire life, after all.

[robvalue]

Absolutely, I support the most ethical treatment possible. We can’t ever be sure what feels what and to what degree, but I feel we should err on the safe side out of respect for the possibility.

[Little lunch]

When I was an apprentice chef I worked at a seafood restaurant on the beach.
One of the dishes required cutting a blue spanner crab into four with scissors and throwing it in with the stir fry.
I did it when the head chef was around but mostly I'd go down to the jetty, grab a crab out of the pot and throw it in the freezer for a while.
Dunno if that was more humane but at least they didn't squirm when cut.