Category: Animal Charities

Goldfish eating, social media and Neknominate

The recent prosecution by the RSPCA of Josh Coles for eating a goldfish that he had just won at a fairground in Stafford caused a stir on social media and revulsion in many people, but there are those that see it as just a bit of harmless fun. Josh Coles pleaded guilty and received a 12 month community service order, £385 costs and was strangely banned from keeping fish for 5 years.

“I didn’t think it was a big issue, I’m an animal lover”.

To its credit, the RSPCA stepped in early on when the craze became popular and has prosecuted many cases over the years but has perversely been accused of heavy handedness and expending money on pointless and worthless prosecutions as they are only fish.

Many people would suggest that as we pay little attention to fish slowly gasping for breath and asphyxiating on the quayside or on fish market slabs and that we find it entertaining to watch celebrities eat live small animals on reality shows why should we be so uptight about a goldfish.

What obviously shocked people the most was the fact that he ate a live goldfish, filmed it and displayed it on YouTube for no other reason than to gain fame and notoriety. It could also be that we identify goldfish and their ilk as pets not food, so we get upset when some inept unthinking person eats one at a funfair, in a Macdonalds restaurant or in the local pub.

Although these acts are mostly done under the influence of alcohol and for a dare there are many which are intentional and planned. Back in 2012, Louis Cole gained fame for regularly eating unusual live animals such as tarantulas and scorpions on his YouTube channel until he came unstuck after he ate a simple goldfish, as he didn’t realise that fish, by having a spine, are covered under anti-cruelty laws and he found himself under investigation by the RSPCA.

Eating live small animals is a common practice and a sure way of getting hits on social media which is awash with such videos. The sad part is that so many young adults appear to find it acceptable behaviour and amusing despite its lack of originality.

It was probably a surprise to many people that it is still lawful to continue this archaic tradition of giving goldfish as prizes in the first place, but it was yet another omission from the Animal Welfare Act back in 2006. Of course the frequency of these incidents could have been reduced if it had been banned as the fish would not have been so easily available.

Social media & Neknominate is mainly to blame.

The online drinking game of neknominate has fuelled the trend over the last few years. In 2014 a 22-year old named Gavin Hope prepared a cocktail then swallowed a pet goldfish and washed it down with a pint as a neknominate dare and was heavily penalised with a £330 fine and £3430 costs. Some take it too far and in the same year Sheldon Jeans swallowed a live frog and lizard and was prosecuted receiving £1,200 in costs.

Although such behaviour is nothing new, social media encourages far more of it in this modern era. There is a pattern to it though, as it mainly involves drunken young males who once they find themselves in court declare they didn’t mean any harm and believe it is funny.

“I didn’t think it was a big issue and I’m an animal lover”

In another incident a Robert Atkinson aged 20 was filmed by his friend Lewis Summers, who ironically worked in a solicitors office, swallowing a live goldfish in their local MacDonald’s having first put it in a pint of beer. Atkinson pleaded guilty and Summers guilty to aiding and abetting and they were both ordered to serve 40 hours of unpaid work and pay a £723 fine each, alongside a victim surcharge of £60. It was a premeditated action and yet he viewed himself as an “animal lover”.

“I didn’t think it was a big issue with it being a small animal. I’m an animal lover myself and I didn’t know I was committing an offence. I have thousands of followers on social media, and I posted the video because I knew it would go viral. Some people thought it was funny but there were a few who thought it was cruel.

Robert Atkinson in his defence.

Judges and Magistrates appear to take the issue seriously.

What is interesting is that magistrates and judges appear to agree that it is a serious act and have made this quite clear. At the trial of Gavin Hope presiding magistrate, David Randall, called it “a stupid thoughtless incident” and at the trial of Atkinson and Summers the judge, to his credit, summed it up in this way and I cannot put it any better:

The real question is how far down the evolutionary scale should we go in pursuing prosecutions of people who commit such acts of cruelty before it is viewed as nonsensical and heavy handed. Theoretically any lack of respect of a living creature must surely be tackled as who knows where it might lead if left unpunished.

Proactive Animal Charities Under Attack.

Why do we lash out at those trying to help animals?

Battery farm battery chickens, cruelty to chickens, hens
Pro-active charities like PETA and the RSPCA concentrate on major cruelty and animal suffering issues.

Proactive animal charities which concentrate on abject cruelty issues are increasingly coming under attack by organisations and groups who wish to maintain the status quo in regard to using and abusing animals. The charities that are targeted tend to be those and whose aims and actions become a nuisance and interfere with people’s pastimes, sports and hobbies.

Proactive charities spend large sums politicking, prosecuting cruelty, crusading, campaigning and educating and on some occasions taking direct action. By doing this they bizarrely attract  excessive criticism and condemnation. Detractors criticise them for spending too much money on these activities rather than rescuing individual dogs and cats even though they often manage to achieve long-term improvements which benefit large numbers of animals.

Rescue dog, rescue kennel
There must be more to animal welfare than rehoming animals or is there?

Those on the front line of these attacks are the UK’s RSPCA and most other SPCA’s around the world and organisations such as Humane Societies of the United States (HSUS) and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA). All of these come under fire from those factions who feel their livelihoods and pastimes are under threat by all their campaigning. It is rare to ever hear a bad word said about charities such as the Dogs Trust, PDSA or Blue Cross because we seem to have a confused concept of what animal welfare entails and where money is better spent.

Should it be spent prosecuting animal cruelty and tackling such issues as hunting, the fur trade, intensive farming methods and  curtailing unnecessary vivisection  or spent subsidising irresponsible pet owners and providing expensive state of the art facilities to house homeless animals.

Anything goes in making them the bad guys.

The RSPCA is continually lambasted for a perceived over-stepping of their remit of “preventing cruelty by all lawful means, promoting kindness and alleviating the suffering of all animals” with biased investigative documentaries, spurious news reports  and hate websites. Hate websites exist for most SPCA’s around the world containing some extreme content and profane remarks. Go onto any search engine and type “hate RSPCA” and you will discover pages of sites decrying them for something or other mostly by misinformed people, but even the legal profession is not averse to stoking up the paranoia.

Some UK lawyers appear on a crusade to curtail animal cruelty prosecutions in the UK.  Some lawyers advertise themselves as specialist defence lawyers against the RSPCA and arguably publish a lot of misinformation to muddy the waters. At least one firm posts quite extreme and lurid viewpoints about the charity on their website. One goes as far as to show an RSPCA sign dripping with blood stating the charity has ‘increasingly taken over the investigation and prosecution’ of animal cruelty in the UK and accuses their inspectors of being “sheep in wolves clothing“ by dressing in police style uniforms to dupe the public.

Website sign, RSPCA, blood
Some sections of the legal profession are obviously not fans of the R.S.P.C.A – from a law firms’ website.

They also cite the RSPCA of slaughtering 1000 healthy dogs and cats annually and state that ‘there are few prosecutions that cause more anxiety and trauma than RSPCA prosecutions’. 

RSPCA hate website
Hate websites can be quite explicit

Critics of Humane Societies of the United States (HSUS) have set up a watchdog site called ‘Humane Watch’ specifically to censure them on the basis that they spend most of their money campaigning ‘on the hill’ (US Congress) at the expense of local animal shelters, killing hundreds of animals unnecessarily and of misleading the public and donors into thinking they are a welfare organisation. Most of their rhetoric is unbelievably spurious and ridiculous but unfortunately many people fall for it. How animal lovers can be against organisations whose wish is to cut the number of animals kept in cages by stopping them from becoming unwanted, abandoned, cruelly treated or sick in the first place is difficult to understand.

HSUS recently fell foul of the powerful US gun lobby: the National Shooting, Sports, and Fishing organisation (NSSF) for trying to get the US Government to ban hunting on one-fifth of the total land area of the USA, which drew the perplexing response from the NSSF that they would expose HSUS as ‘the anti-hunting, radical animal rights organisation it is’.

Better to give money to “woolly charities?”

Using the term “animal rights” is a clever tool because it gives the impression that an organisation is in some way anti-society or violent and conjures up  pictures of hooded people turning up in the middle of the night with bombs and making abusive telephone calls and death threats. By accusing them of being “animal rightist” they hope to persuade donors not to fund them, and they actively promote giving money to what some have described as ‘woolly’ charities which are  viewed less threatening to their interests and who avoid any confrontation by solely finding homes for “fluffy animals“.

Statements made by critics that money is better used directly on ‘animal welfare’ by harmless rescue centres and not to pro-active animal charities highlights our increasing misconception that welfare is  just about rescuing and finding homes for unwanted animals. Most of the rhetoric is aimed at making out that the aims of animal rights are far less meaningful than those of animal welfare.

The self-proclaimed world’s largest animal rights organisation  PETA is probably the most maligned organisation on the planet and attracts criticism from all quarters including vegans and animal lovers. They are accused of hating animals and “furthering their own political interests“. A lot of this revolves around the impression that they want to ban pet owning, destroy most companion animals and stop us from having any fun with them, which is mostly taken somewhat out of context. Most of the good work they do on other issues is mostly overlooked such is our fixation with companion animals.

It is evident that as a society we are extremely split and misinformed when it involves the “rescuing” and “saving” of animals and we have great difficulty deciding how best to accomplish the best for all animals. It is unfortunate that we feel we have to lash out at those who do so much work to help them which only aids those that want to continue abusing animals.