"Works Up to Six Days After Death!"
Posted on 07/25/2004 4:25:01 PM PDT by aculeus
ROME: Monza, a Northern Italian city best known for its Formula 1 Grand Prix, has become the first place in Italy to ban pet owners from keeping their goldfish in bowls, the council said on Friday.
The town council passed a ruling "on the treatment of domestic animals, which will go into effect in a fortnight", council official Giampietro Mosca told AFP. The text, acknowleged as "avant-garde" by its backer, bans the sale of coloured chicks at fairs, the use of small animals as competition prizes as well as outlawing goldfish bowls.
"A fish kept in a bowl has a distorted view of reality...and suffers because of this. Also, this type of receptacle generally doesn't have a filter and doesn't allow for good oxygenation of the water, unlike in rectangular aquariums," Mosca explained.
"This story about the goldfish, which has gone around Italy, seems a little irrelevant and people have mocked it a bit, but it has a very specific educational sense, especially for the little ones", he added.
"The ruling is intended to transmit a message about the correct treatment of domestic animals", Mosca said.
"In Monza, where we have no less than 15,000 dogs for 120,000 inhabitants, you have no idea of the hygiene problems caused by animals and people living together and we don't want to see animals treated like objects any longer", he concluded.
Other regions, such as Reggio Emilia, have rules on the treatment of animals derived from a 1991 national law, but the goldfish clause is a "singularity of Monza", according to Mosca.
© The Australian
Nice to know that ALL the flakes don't live in Frisco.
You've got to keep them in bowls. If you keep them in plates they die......
"Works Up to Six Days After Death!"
John Edwards has agreed to be general counsel for the goldfish in the multi-million class-action lawsuit.
Guess that goldfish I swallowed in High School would have really landed me in trouble in this Italian town.
I keep mine in a saucer. I don't think he ever learned to swim.. He just lies there motionless. Do you think it's his diet or is he just lazy?
Good Lordy Mercy. I am so glad I was a child before this silliness started. I knew that little gold fish that I would take home in a water filled baggie was not going to live for long. I was as fasinated by the burial by toilet as much as anything. Take a child fishing -----please.
One day a silly urge came over me and I walked into a pet store on the way home and purchased two small gold fish and a two gallon fish bowl. I tossed in some garden gravel and it was supposed to be a treat for the children. One fish died the first week. the second fish lived....and lived......and lived.
what I thought was going to be a six month project lived for 51/2 years. Of cleaning the bowl. Of feeding the fish. I used to let the water get so cloudy you could not see the fish. I swear that fish has a headlamp to find its way around the fish bowl.
It died because I fogot to rinse the soap from the rocks.
I was positively chipper at the funeral.
When I read the headline I expected the story to be about goldfish bowls filled full of kool-aid mixed with Everclear.
Next they'll be banning hanging plants.
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