Live food, what is morally acceptable

i live in tallaght and i'm on the scratcher, that would leave me rightly in the s***

Derek, just music to my Ears.

I remember seeing a poster on a mates wall of a scene with people everywhere, not an inch of Ground visible, it had a huge effect on me , affected me to this day. Wall to Wall Human Flesh.

Kev.

Ah Dar, you crack me up good on ya, nice retort , it's a while since I had a big smile on my Face. Lots in the same boat these and I'd say, a Dad doesn't fit the Bill of being unemployed , hard work I'd say but I get where you're coming from.

Kev.

dar wrote:

i live in tallaght and i'm on the scratcher, that would leave me rightly in the s***

maybe it'll be in the next budget.

male non smoker seeks room in dublin 4 area

ok lads this has been a great thread and a bit of a laugh but should we ask for the off topics to be removed?

But Dar , that would entail removing your last post...

Kev.

stretnik wrote:

And then Jay, comes the hardest thing of all, if I am to understand what you are saying, being where we are is the pinnacle of our success, our evolution stops right here. I don't see that as a great achievement. To really go off on a tangent and risk some serious rebuttal or worse, we have perpetuated our Species by purposely manipulating Genes and by causing defective Genes to go through the worlds population , unchecked and un-contained, at least animals in the wild adhere to the rules of nature, a three legged Antelope will be killed shortly after birth but a Person with the Gene for having one leg will be cared for, cossetted, Psychologically made to feel as normal as everyone else , to go on, have Children and therefore carry forth the defective gene for one leg into countless Generations, the number of Genetically inherited Genes that now infiltrate the population worldwide is unknown but at some time down the Road will raise it's ugly Head and then what?

We are concentrating a defective Gene pool every time a Medical cure is found, a superficial management of a serious underlying problem.

Please don't accuse me of advocating Euthenasia or anything like that, I am just putting thoughts to Cyber Paper.

Kev.

I dont believe for one minute that we have become eveything we can be. Not by a long shot. Just look around you and see the state the world is in right now. We as a people have a long way to go, and if we play our cards right I would hope that we can count our recorded history in the tens if not hundreds of thousands of years. With regards to genetic modification, granted, this could be a dangerous science in "the wrong hands" but what an achievement. You say that caring for individuals born with certain disabilities, should they go on to procreate can lead to bad genes rearing their heads down the line, but scientists now can identify these defective genes, even before birth and turn them off. Thats one helluva feat of science in my opinion. Then you have people like Norman Ernest Borlaug. Most folks will not have heard of him but he was, put simply, a hero. Forget your, Churhills, Pattons, Christs and Allahs, this guy actually got off his @ss and put his ever evolving brain to good use and became the guy who saved a billion people. Its people like this that make me keep my "faith" in humanity.

Jay

derek wrote:

this has made very interesting reading but the question itself "what is morally acceptible" is always going to create division as we all have different moral standards. morals like everything else can be very personal and each of us has to live with our own conscience.
from what i've read on this thread, my own thoughts would most closely coincide with those expressed by ian, stretnik and spookymuffin, but i also found most of the other offerings interesting and thought provoking.
i have to add that viperbots offer to wipe out all living creatures (non human) if it would save any single one of the earths billions of humans chilled me to the bone. what a prospect, a world without birds and animals and with more and more billions of people.
and instead of fox/stag hunts and hare coursing we could have deprived area tenant hunts and unemployed people coursing.

I apologise if I offended you, merely hammering home a point.

Jay

jay, i was'nt offended just shocked by the vision, and if you said you intended to shoot all the politicians, bankers developers and celtic tiger nagging women (in jeeps) i'd offer to pay for the bullets.

Ah yes, women in jeeps. Small dog syndrome at its worst. If Gaybo said it, it must be true.

Jay

i really enjoyed reading this thread. it had science, philosophy, passion and humour. great debate is about differing viewpoints.
well done to all contributers so far and i hope the debate continues.

you've just encapsulated what the forum should be all about.I agree, more of this say I!

Agreed.

This is a great thread!
As others have already pointed out, I think framing the question from a moral perspective is always going to be very divisive. I think we all tend to have quite a rigid moral viewpoint, even though our thoughts can be quite contradictory on matters that are essentially very similar. The farming animals versus breeding feeder fish is certainly a case in point. It's all too easy to make assumptions in a positive way (i.e. welfare of farmed animals being good) if that supports out point of view (I like eating meat), or negative assumptions (pain felt by prey animals being eaten by captive predators) if that supports a position that we have taken on a topic (live feeding is unnecessary).

I'm going to be a little controversial perhaps in saying that I think we are overly anthropomorphizing animals by talking about them in terms of human feelings and emotions. Do animals 'feel' happy? I don't think that can be proven one way or the other for most species.

I'm not suggesting that animals don't feel pain, from a neuroscience perspective most animals from shrimp to apes have the capacity to feel pain, in that they have the physical 'machinery' (sensory neurons, ganglia etc), but it's difficult to know if they perceive pain in the way that humans know it. Just because a shrimp, a worm or a fish can't let out a yelp or make a pained expression doesn't mean it has not processed something akin to pain as we know it. In short we just don't know yet.

However, what I believe is important to keep in mind when thinking about the ethical or moral implications of live feeding, captivity etc is that life is a horrible struggle (a battle even) in the wild. For almost all creatures (except top predators) every waking moment is spent looking for food and trying to avoid being eaten. This is true of fish, rodents, deer, birds. If you're on someone's menu you spend your entire day trying not to be seen, not to be found, not to be eaten. An owl catching a mouse is not concerned with whether the mouse is killed quickly to avoid suffering. That is the reality in the wild.

Of course things are different in captivity. Lots of people have pointed out that in the confines of a tank/cage the prey animal has no chance of escape and so it changes the dynamic. This was something that always coloured my view of live feeding to snakes, especially as I used to breed the mice and rats! It wasn't necessary to feed my snakes live, so I didn't. But this had as much to do with the potential injury a mouse/rat could do to a snake that wasn't particularly interested in eating at that point. I was less concerned about the cute little mice or rats because ultimately I had to kill them myself.

That brings me onto the topic of humanely killing the animals. The law (at least as it applies to working with animals) is that every effort must be made to minimize pain and suffering and ethical approval must be granted in advance. But some pain is unavoidable. This is true of farming too. Anyone who has ever been to a slaughterhouse will tell you that the animals know what is going to happen. It's not a pleasant experience.

So what about fish? Personally I don't have a problem with feeding live foods (mostly artemia and worms) but I've had my fair share of greedy fish in the past who happily devoured tankmates (my own stupidity!) and it's hard to view it as anything more than natural instincts taking over in the bigger fish. Fishflakes are cheaper certainly, but they're still made from fish which had to be killed (and most likely 'suffered' in the process) so it's all about deciding who does the killing in my own opinion.

I think you'll find that most of the fish/inverts contained in Flakes do not consist of the choicer cuts of Fish, more like Tails, Heads, fins and innards with a compliment of vegetable matter, minerals and Vitamins etc.

Dog Food and Cat Food consists of Offal and inedible ( from a Human perspective ) material that would otherwise end up in landfill.

Our striving for perfection in what we eat, ie, no imperfections etc has led to unprecedented use of pesticides and herbicides to ensure the customer doesn't see specs or damage on Apples etc, organic tastes better, no contest, I've been involved in trials and the the Jury is in, organic wins.

As I have stated before, it's a slippery slope, Monsanto are proving that Humans are stupid , they are /have developed a strain of corn unaffected by Roundup, their flagship herbicide and sell this corn to Farmers ensuring sales of the modified Corn and Roundup.

They have developed Seed that will germinate and grow well in impoverished conditions but the resulting seed is infertile so Farmers cannot save some to grow the following year, they must buy the patented seed from Monsanto, so who rules the world?

Kev.

most fish breeders in the past kept what was referred to as a bin fish. this was a large predatory fish which was partially fed on unwanted or culled fry. one fish often kept for this purpose was the oscar but as these are inefficient predators the unfortunate victims often suffered a slow death. pike cichlids or frontosa were more suited for this task. often the unwanted fish were stunned before being added and then they were swallowed instantly. all sounds a bit gruesome but it did ensure a better quality end product from the breeders. the better breeders would cull while fry were very small and this was more efficient.
the alternative to sensible culling is runted, deformed and poor quality fish, (which i'm sorry to say is very common these days).
i am just telling the tale and not neccessarily reccomending this proccess.

Cull or Sell-on? yep, a question that some have decided on one way or the other (and money sometimes become the guiding factor).

most animal mgt programmes have a cull factored in,it's just good husbandry if you ask me.the survival of the fittest enforced in a tank if you will.I wish more people did it, take the state of guppies a couple of years ago as an example.horribly inbred short lived and in many cases deformed.the quality is better these days but only marginally so.I was having a conversation with a customer about "responsible" breeding and this came up too.
Interesting so it is.

the difference between f0 and f100 are huge,imo all runts and deformed fish should be culed,why would anyone want these,a man made problem can have a man made solution,feeders live or not

convict84 wrote:

the difference between f0 and f100 are huge,imo all runts and deformed fish should be culed,why would anyone want these,a man made problem can have a man made solution,feeders live or not

Well said, and I couldnt agree more.

Jay