Tell Edmonds Rotary:
Fishing Is Not Kids’ Entertainment

[Ed. Note: Please read the article and or PDF: What About Fish?]

FROM  Action for Animals (AFA)

ACTION

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!