spectr17
06-15-2005, 08:37 PM
PETA to plead empathy for fish
By MICHAEL OVERALL World Staff Writer
6/14/2005
A PETA delegation plans to protest the upcoming Youth World Bowfishing Championship.
This weekend, he's going to take his daughters to the lake, just like his father used to take him.
They will talk, and laugh, and eat snacks. And they will try to create memories that will make them want to take their own kids to the lake someday.
While they are doing all that, they will use a bow and arrow to kill as many fish as possible.
"It's fun, and it's something we can do together," Brandon Taber said. "I just don't see anything wrong with that."
PETA does.
A delegation from the group will hold a news conference Tuesday in Tulsa to protest bowfishing -- and specifically the Youth World Bowfishing Championship this weekend at Fort Gibson Lake.
Bowfishing involves hunting for fish in shallow water and shooting them with arrows that are attached to fishing lines.
Using gory photographs and gruesome video, PETA officials will plead for empathy for the fish.
"Scientists have proven that fish are intelligent individuals who feel pain just like we do," said Karin Robertson, an activist with People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.
If families want to do something together, they can do something that doesn't inflict suffering and death on another creature, she suggested.
Taber has heard this argument before, and it doesn't seem to impress him.
"This is part of their agenda," said Taber, vice president of the Bowfishing Association of America. "First, take away bowfishing. Then all fishing. And then hunting. That's what they want."
Taber and Robertson have never met, but they are remarkably accurate in predicting what each other will say.
Robertson knows, for example, that Taber will describe bowfishing as harmless, family fun.
Taber knows that Robertson will describe bowfishing as cruel butchery of defenseless animals.
To back up that description, a PETA activist went undercover to film a bloody documentary about the sport, with fish being torn to pieces, their carcasses piled into trash cans.
"The footage is hideous -- just disgusting," as a PETA news release describes it. "And it will cause people to empathize with fish -- finally."
Even without seeing it himself, Taber dismisses the video, saying PETA has a long history of editing footage to cast the worst possible light on hunting and fishing.
"Of course there's some blood," he said, speaking by telephone from his home in Meeker. "That's part of fishing and hunting. But nobody is torturing the fish."
PETA is singling out the Youth Bowfishing Championship, which will attract families from across the country, because it teaches children to enjoy the infliction of pain, Robertson said.
"Bowfishing teaches that sadistically impaling animals on arrows and leaving them to die in agony is an OK way to end an afternoon," she said.
"In this age of increasing violence, do we really want to teach our children to laugh and delight in impaling animals and watching them writhe in pain?"
That's not the way Taber sees it, of course.
"We're teaching kids to do stuff with their families and not be out wandering the streets," he said. "If more kids were raised fishing and hunting, we wouldn't have so many kids in trouble and on drugs."
The crux of the debate seems to be whether bowfishing is cruel to the fish.
Obviously, the fish bleed and die. And as the PETA video shows, they desperately struggle to free themselves. PETA activists present this as evidence that the fish are experiencing fear and pain.
For Taber, however, the question is whether the fish even know what's happening to them.
"No," he said. "They don't."
By MICHAEL OVERALL World Staff Writer
6/14/2005
A PETA delegation plans to protest the upcoming Youth World Bowfishing Championship.
This weekend, he's going to take his daughters to the lake, just like his father used to take him.
They will talk, and laugh, and eat snacks. And they will try to create memories that will make them want to take their own kids to the lake someday.
While they are doing all that, they will use a bow and arrow to kill as many fish as possible.
"It's fun, and it's something we can do together," Brandon Taber said. "I just don't see anything wrong with that."
PETA does.
A delegation from the group will hold a news conference Tuesday in Tulsa to protest bowfishing -- and specifically the Youth World Bowfishing Championship this weekend at Fort Gibson Lake.
Bowfishing involves hunting for fish in shallow water and shooting them with arrows that are attached to fishing lines.
Using gory photographs and gruesome video, PETA officials will plead for empathy for the fish.
"Scientists have proven that fish are intelligent individuals who feel pain just like we do," said Karin Robertson, an activist with People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.
If families want to do something together, they can do something that doesn't inflict suffering and death on another creature, she suggested.
Taber has heard this argument before, and it doesn't seem to impress him.
"This is part of their agenda," said Taber, vice president of the Bowfishing Association of America. "First, take away bowfishing. Then all fishing. And then hunting. That's what they want."
Taber and Robertson have never met, but they are remarkably accurate in predicting what each other will say.
Robertson knows, for example, that Taber will describe bowfishing as harmless, family fun.
Taber knows that Robertson will describe bowfishing as cruel butchery of defenseless animals.
To back up that description, a PETA activist went undercover to film a bloody documentary about the sport, with fish being torn to pieces, their carcasses piled into trash cans.
"The footage is hideous -- just disgusting," as a PETA news release describes it. "And it will cause people to empathize with fish -- finally."
Even without seeing it himself, Taber dismisses the video, saying PETA has a long history of editing footage to cast the worst possible light on hunting and fishing.
"Of course there's some blood," he said, speaking by telephone from his home in Meeker. "That's part of fishing and hunting. But nobody is torturing the fish."
PETA is singling out the Youth Bowfishing Championship, which will attract families from across the country, because it teaches children to enjoy the infliction of pain, Robertson said.
"Bowfishing teaches that sadistically impaling animals on arrows and leaving them to die in agony is an OK way to end an afternoon," she said.
"In this age of increasing violence, do we really want to teach our children to laugh and delight in impaling animals and watching them writhe in pain?"
That's not the way Taber sees it, of course.
"We're teaching kids to do stuff with their families and not be out wandering the streets," he said. "If more kids were raised fishing and hunting, we wouldn't have so many kids in trouble and on drugs."
The crux of the debate seems to be whether bowfishing is cruel to the fish.
Obviously, the fish bleed and die. And as the PETA video shows, they desperately struggle to free themselves. PETA activists present this as evidence that the fish are experiencing fear and pain.
For Taber, however, the question is whether the fish even know what's happening to them.
"No," he said. "They don't."