Please Sign This

[alex_b]

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This petition is for those who would like to see the RSPCA and other animal welfare charities put a greater emphasis on the welfare of aquatic life.

Sign this petition if you believe:

- aquatic life is under-represented and more campaigns should be run to raise awareness of the complex needs of aquatic life
- the RSPCA and similar organisations should put increased pressure on retailers and third parties, such as eBay, who sell, or allow the sale of, aquariums that are clearly unfit for purpose and are misadvertised and which, as such, are in breach of the RSPCA 'Five Freedoms' (1) and the Animal Welfare Act 2006 (2), which state that an animal should be free from discomfort, free to express normal behaviour, should be kept in a suitable environment and should be kept with others of the same species, where applicable.


Please feel free to add comments alongside your name and city / town, but keep them formal as I intend to submit this entire thread to the RSPCA.


(1)

RSPCA believes that the basic welfare of all animals must take into account the 'Five Freedoms': Freedom from hunger and thirst; Freedom from discomfort; Freedom from pain, injury or disease; Freedom to express normal behaviour; Freedom from fear and distress.

Taken from: http/www.rspca.org.uk/servlet/Sate...ntactChecklist

(2)

What does the new law do?

It makes owners and keepers responsible for ensuring that the welfare needs of their animals are met.

These include the need:

For a suitable environment (place to live)
For a suitable diet
To exhibit normal behaviour patterns
To be housed with, or apart from, other animals (if applicable)
To be protected from pain, injury, suffering and disease

Taken from: http/www.defra.gov.uk/animalh/welfare/act/index.htm

 

[alex_b]

You may be sceptical but I have posted on several forums and I'm prepared to go to retailers... but I need your name and town. 20 seconds please - it's no skin off your nose, if you care about fish!

 

[nurglespuss]

I think you may be better off targetting the buyer, raather than the sellers of such items. Education is the key, not new controls.

i admire your initiative, but perhaps a campaign to make petshops feature more detailed free leaflets, and fact sheets for each fish.

Good Luck.

 

[alex_b]

That's what I want them to do - that is what the first clause is about. But certain retailers who I have seen selling unsuitable tanks will be undoubtably doing it through ignorance, not greed, which is where the second part comes in. Education targeting a different area. As a trainee teacher I'm all for the education side but I can't do it on my university grant and the RSPCA needs to know that that's what people would like them to do.

 

[Darkstar]

While it can be argued what your doing is admirable (excluding the emotional blackmail in your second post, which I very much dislike btw) I very much doubt this will amount to anything. It sounds like this was written by someone with good intentions but no clue.

Freedom to express normal behaviour

Please define normal behaviour? Is swimming back and forth all day long classed as normal behaviour? Is living in an enviroment where you don't risk the potential of being eaten every day result in normal behaviour? Is living within, at best a 10x3x2, going to let them experience normal behaviour? Is picking up recently unfrozen food from the gravel bottom replicating normal behaviour? Surely I should be feeding live fish to my predatory fish to replicate normal behaviour?...and surely the fish that gets eaten is also at that time experiencing what would be classed as a normal event in the wild? But the Rspca don't like us doing that do they...in fact it's not allowed. So surely aren't we just taking the bits we like about nature etc, disregarding the bits we don't like and then defining what's left as the best way to keep them...nicely dumbed down I think.

should be kept in a suitable environment

Define suitable?...Do I need to turn my living room into the Amazon in order to fulfull the concept of a suitable enviroment. If you wish to use the term 'suitable enviroment' then surely the only suitable place is in the river, lake, ocean where they originally came from. Anything else is just cruel surely? I know if you put me in a cell, no matter how big it is, it's still going to feel like a cell to me.

Freedom from fear and distress

Why? Surely fear is something they experience naturally in their own true enviroment, otherwise they wouldn't have developed the fear emotion in the first place.
So does suppressing certain emotions they would normally experience in their original and natural enviroment result in the best possible enviroment for them?

Fundamentally these are all nice things to say, as I'm sure we'd all like to see fish kept in their best possible enviroment...but that is not always possible and without proper definitions of the basic statements you've put forward, it will come to nothing imo. So no, I am not going to sign it but unlike your second post that doens't mean I don't care about fish.

 

[PRW1988]

I agree with everything you just said Dark, infact you saved me the time of writting lol.

Now, I do care about fish, highly infact... and I do care for them to the best of my knownledge. For instance my Oscar currently inhabits a 55gallon tank (stand 4x12wide) and he's grown 2" since I got him to a total of 14", my tank is too small so I'm bringing him to the store (which they have 100gallon tanks) and he'll be better off there.

Simply knowledge and knowing when to do the right thing is what will truly help animals and aquatic life. Attempting to control people and stores will do nothing. In fact, I find this a bit obsered. I'm not going to sign this petition, because I really don't enjoy placing my names on things, especially if I do not agree 100% with them.

Similar to what Darkstar has said, just because I won't sign this, doesn't mean I don't care about fish.