Food sold live

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I have heard of some place where they sell fish live. Too bad I am not there. If I were, I would buy tons of that fish in order NOT to eat it and instead try to heal it and help it stay alive. I am not vegetarian but eating alive things just makes me feel awful. Most ppl who dont want to eat it just dont buy it. I think they SHOULD buy it in order to save it from everyone else who would eat it.

I'm not understanding this post. Are you talking about restaurants that serve live fish on a plate or stores that sell live food fish? If you're talking about stores that sell live fish as food then you'd best stay out of Seattle. You can walk into any Asian market and see live fish, crabs and lobsters in their tanks.

I wouldn't buy it, but I respect the right of others to do so. In the end, we are just part of the food chain and if we didn't eat those fish, another predator would.

I was thinking about restaurants but yeah it applies to both.



On the contrary, I should GO TO SEATLE and buy as much of that food as possible in order NOT TO EAT IT thus save it from ppl who would, and also when I buy it, try to heal it and make it healthy.

That doesn't sound like a very good technique, you would actually be financing the fishers/restaurants in a way that makes them think "Hey, live fish is profitable" and maybe some of them (a few, but it still could be significant) could enlarge the business and attract more live fish sellers.

It's like paying for ransoms, if a guy could get a million by kidnaping a child, why wouldn't the 10 others who otherwise taught it was a bad idea? And the guy who got a million? He could want a couple more millions since the first time was to "cheap".

The best way to fight that would be through organized protests and legal "combat", so to speak.

But you do know that most times the fish are sold alive not to be served alive, but to stay fresh, at least in the ocidental gastronomy...Can't say the same thing about the asians. Actually, in the case of lobsters, they are actually boiled alive (I do believe it's forbidden in some countries).

They are encouraged or discouraged based on statistics that is made out of millions of people so if one more person buys it it wont further encourage them they wont notice it. HOWEVER if you do buy it, you WILL be rescuing the life of specific creature and THAT is where your action WILL make a difference.

Except the demand is still there and the fishy you just released back to freedom is only caught again and eaten by someone/something else. Worse, it may die a lingering death due to being released into a habitat that's different from the one it was caught in.

You want to do something good and that's admirable.... might want to refocus those efforts on preventing your fish friends from being caught in the first place... but you're fighting the vast majority of the human race on that one. Maybe joining a vegetarian advocacy group?

I'm not speaking about large fish industries, some of those restaurants, usually the luxury ones buy fish for quite a selective group of small fish merchants, which would make that "one" actually make quite a difference for the merchant and off course, for the restaurant, even for big restaurants it's always a big difference, if someone has an average of 10 costumers and gets "one" more, it's a 10% increase of sales, it's a huge difference.

The mentallity of the "one" not mattering is what causes problems all around the world, because statistics are nothing more then the reflection of the behaviour of those insignificant "ones". or example, imagine a river. Each people who passes throws their junk in the river instead of throwing it in a can because..."It's just a can, it will do no harm" or "A plastic bag won't make a difference". Sonner or later that hipotetical river would be an authentic aquatic junkyard.

And by buying you are just "feeding" the slaughter, because if it is bought, the stock must be refilled for new costumers, unless you buy them all or most of them and the stock runs out before it can be restocked, that way a couple off people might not have any live fish to buy, but they could come back later (or another day) when they have fish again. Save one, doom another.

Your intentions are good, trying to save something, but funding what actually is trying to kill the thing is not a good idea.

Exactly, I did forgot that point. Being free doesn't actually means safe, most fishes won't make it alive just because they are inside water, it's all about climaterical differences, the others species that exist in the region it's freed (both predators and food). And in case of fish who were raised in aquariums, I don't even know if they are capable of surviving in the wild out doors... If you aren't well informed (Which I do not know, for all I know you could be a biologist or veterinary), you might only be giving them another way to die.

Who actually serves live fish to people? Aren't they supposed to kill it first, so it's edible?... and there is very little risk of illness? The best fish for food is a fresh killed one. So it makes sense to keep it live, until it's time to kill it.

You aren't really saving them anyway. The more you buy, the more these people sell. Demand goes high, so they buy more, and the cycle repeats. "Ooh people are really enjoying my trout! Guess I better buy some more for them!" That's how business goes. Releasing them isn't going to help them or the wild population either. They will most likely end up dying, especially if they are bred and grown in captivity, because they are not used to the wild. They can also spread captive illness into the wild, making wild fish sick and dying.

Please post a link to one of these restaurants. I'm curious.

Update: I just came back from Youtube where there are a few videos of chefs in Hong Kong and Japan that serve like octopus, shrimp and squid. It's fascinating to see that the tentacles stay alive for song long! After the squid has been beheaded in enviscerated, it's served on a plate. The man picked up each tentacle and dipped it in soy sauce where it would wriggle! I know a restaurant in Chinatown here that serves live shrimp. I suppose everything tastes good with soy sauce, maybe even worms or grubs.

There's also a restaurant in Hong Kong that serves fish in a way I can see being banned in the U.S. They suspend live fish in a vat of boiling oil where only the body gets fried. The head is untouched and much alive. Can you imagine? This must be what the OP was referring to.

In related news: How many people are aware the most brutal people in the world are Asians? To wit:
1. During the Khmer Rouge siege of Cambodia, in oder to save bullets, the soldiers simply stabbed their prisoners in the neck or cut their throats. With the younger prisoners, they simply smahed them against a street.
2. The Nazis experimented on prisoners. They were brutal, but their Japanese counterparts just had to go several steps further. Their experiments in Manchurian camp 731 is a testament to human depravity. All of their insane acts of brutality were conducted on life victims.
3. The Chinese were masters at torture. Just a short tour in a museum would reveal the plethora of bone breaking, vein cutting, skin disheveling devices at their disposal.
4. In North Korea, they still execute the old-fashioned way - burning on a live stake. And they still have gulags. Ugh.
5. Back to China. There is evidence of more than 100 torture methods used against members of the banned Falun Gong religion, including water boarding, death beds, etc. And this is MODERN China!

Well, I can always inform them about the reason I am buying it. They will still sell it since they want their money.



I dont have to release them. I can keep them as pets and make sure to take the best possible care of them.

I could be wrong but I don't think the squid are still alive, its just an involuntary reaction of their tentacles to salt or something. The funniest thing I read was when a woman ate one of these "alive" squids and later she experienced excruciating pain in her mouth and felt crawling all over her tongue. She had somehow eaten the squid's genitalia and it had ejaculated and it was quite painful, the squid sperm stuck to her tongue and she had to get it surgically removed. By "it" I mean the sperm bags, they stuck to her tongue and the inside of her cheek.

If you feel that strongly about fish welfare I think you would be better off spending your money getting some big heavy stone blocks, sticking some big strong steel hooks on them and dumping them in trawling areas.

Each one would save tens of thousands of fish from ever being caught by trashing the very expensive nets detering fishing in the area and creating a safe, natural habitat for the fish.

I would definitely advice you not to release any animals that you buy.

Unless you know for sure exactely where they are wildcaught and can release them the same place.

Where I come from it is illegal to release forign species in nature. It can lead to irreplaceable harm for the local flora and fauna (for example see here http://www.wildsingapore.com/places/release.htm). Here in denmark "animal rights activists" somtimes release minks from minkfarms. This leads to most of the released mink suffering a slow death, the ones that surrive are a threat to the local fauna - they can cause harm to local, endangered species!

Any animal you release can turn into an invasive species and endanger local flora and fauna.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasive_species

Helle

I've never heard of fish being eaten alive, that is kind of nasty.

They may be shipped alive but they are killed humanely during cooking. In order to do some foods like sushi, you have to have fresh fish.

It's natural, we are omnivores, we have the ability to eat both meat and veg.