Aug. 1st is “Respect for Fish Day,” an annual day of action created by In Defense of Animals to raise awareness about the plight of fish.

Fish are the planet’s most widely abused animal, but their suffering receives the least attention. Trillions of fish are exploited and killed every year in the food industry, pet trade, and laboratories.

Indifference toward fish is often established early on, as fishing is a popular activity to do with kids. If as a child you were taken fishing and expressed concern for the fish, an adult might have told you not to worry, “fish don’t feel pain.”

Yet science is increasingly revealing that fish are intelligent, emotional beings who are indeed capable of feeling pain.

Consider that until as recently as the 1980s, it was widely believed within the medical community that babies did not feel pain. (Google the 1985 case of Jeffrey Lawson.) Observing that babies didn’t react to stimuli the same way adults did, doctors theorized that newborns were primitive organisms, oblivious to pain. This grave error in thinking led to physicians routinely operating on newborns with little or no anesthesia.

The same false beliefs about non-existent pain also prevailed in veterinary medicine. As recently as a few decades ago, veterinary students were taught that dogs and cats do not really feel pain.

If we were wrong about newborn babies and pets feeling pain, it’s certainly plausible that we have been wrong about fish.

Newsletter