Most Humane Way to Clean Fish

I saw this in Google's cache of a webpage that no longer exists, and I
figured I'd preserve it by posting it he


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The Most Humane Way to Clean Fish


** Those of us who fish have on frequent occasion, wonder to what
extent fish feel pain during the process of catching and cleaning them.

We certainly are concerned with the survival of those species that we
release, taking care to make sure that they swim away to "fight another

day." But what about those that make into our coolers?


What is the most humane way of dealing with the basic living creatures?

For the answer, here are the thoughts of neurobiologist Dr. Sarah Fox,
who has done extensive research into the sensory aspects of fish.


By Sarah Fox, Ph.D.


As a neurobiologist who has done some work with fish, and as a recent
observer of the fishing/cleaning process, I'm quite concerned at some
practices (not mentioned in the article) that have been time-honored
common practice, at least among sport fishermen. I have a few very well

educated thoughts, and I would appreciate your making your readers
aware of them somehow.


My concern isn't so much how to *clean* a fish as it is how and when to

*kill* it. I was horrified to watch as one fisherman pulled a live fish

out of a bucket and clumsily started scaling it. When he was done with
the scaling, he cut the head off. He explained that he needed the head
to hold, in order to do the scaling. I pointed to a scaling board (with

a tail clamp) about 3 feet from him, suggesting that he could cut the
head off first, and *then* scale the fish on the board. He didn't want
to do it that way. He said the fish didn't feel anything anyway,
because it's a cold-blooded animal.


As a neurobiologist, I've done quite a lot of work on cold-blooded
animals. It is an outright myth that they don't feel pain. They do.
I've personally recorded from nerve cells that transmit pain
information to the brain, so I know the pain information is there. An
animal would certainly have a difficult time surviving if it were
unconcerned about bodily injury, so pain pathways are quite necessary
in all animals!


My friend took a much more humane approach and cut off the head before
doing anything else. However, her cut left just enough of the muscle
behind that I could see the fish (i.e. its head) writhing for a few
minutes thereafter. I had always trusted the folk wisdom that
decapitation means instant death and loss of consciousness. Apparently
that's a myth too. This would especially be true in a cold blooded
animal, as its rate of oxygen consumption (hence, suffocation) is quite

low. The head did not die from loss of circulation or neural input. It
slowly suffocated (and almost certainly with a great deal of pain).


One thing we did that helped was to "cold-anesthetize" the fish before
killing them. This was very easy: We dumped ice in the fish bucket.
Because the fish are cold blooded, loss of body heat is not distressing

to them, at least in the same sense as it would be to a bird or mammal.

There is no thermal setpoint to fight. As the fish cools off, its
metabolism slows too, entering into what would be very similar to a
hibernation state for a mammal. When it stops moving, it's effectively
"anesthetized." In this state, it can be cleaned rather painlessly.
Ultimately, though, there is a suffocation issue for the head. When it
warms back up, it becomes metabolically active again. However, there is

no question that there would very little pain this way.


Commercially, fish are flung out of the water and allowed to suffocate
in the air. While this may seem a difficult fate, it is perhaps a more
humane one. If suffocation is inevitable, either before or after
decapitation, then why not suffocate before decapitation and not have
to endure the pain of being scaled and cut up? Some fishermen have a
practice of pulling their catch out of the water and throwing it
directly into an ice chest. This is a method of cold anesthesia, which
when combined with suffocation, is probably more humane still. Perhaps
the ultimate technique in humane fishing would be to throw the catch
into a bucket of ice water, where it can still breathe, but where it
will quickly be anesthetized. Then throw it on ice, where it will
suffocate slowly during a prolonged state of anesthesia.


It is invitable that we must kill something to live, whether it is a
cow or a chicken or a fish or a vegetable. These are all life forms
that have their own right to life, just like ours. Inevitably, we can't

all live, so one creature must inevitably be consumed by another. None
of us should have any problem with that. However, there is no reason,
as smart as we are, that we cannot be merciful in the way we gather our

food. That is the least we can do for the creatures that lose their
lives to sustain ours.


Peace,
Sarah Fox, Ph.D.