People who are concerned about animals often completely overlook fish, thinking of them as a lower order of life. While fish may seem alien to us, scientific research clearly shows that fish have complex nervous systems and feel pain.

The British Farm Animal Welfare Council reports: “The fact that fish are cold-blooded does not prevent them from having a pain system and, indeed, such a system is valuable in preserving life and maximising the biological fitness of individuals.”

Fish actually produce the same endorphines and pain-transmitting chemicals that humans produce. As a result, the anguish that they experience as they are pulled out of the water, undergoing suffocation and decompression, is very similar to that which a human would suffer under the same conditions.

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