Have funfair goldfish had their chips? (Activists say it's cruel to put fish in baggies)

LONDON (Reuters) - Funfairs could come under pressure this summer to scrap the age-old tradition of giving away goldfish as prizes because the practice is seen as cruel.

Winning a goldfish in a plastic bag, as synonymous with funfairs as candy floss and a ride on the dodgems, may be on the way out if the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals has its way.

"We would like to see the end of goldfish in little plastic bags," a spokeswoman for the animal welfare group said on Monday.

"The fish can suffer stress and can die from a result of changes in temperature. Those little bags can heat up surprisingly quickly in the sunshine," she said.

How do they think fish get home when bought from a pet store? They go in the same type of little plastic baggies. Now if they really want to bug someone they can always go after the live fish supply places that sell fish to pet stores. When I worked selling fish, they would send the fish bagged 100 per bag in a bag smaller than a garbage bag. That was usually for small fish like neons and guppies. Siamese Fighting fish (bettas) had it even worse. They were bagged seperately in tiny little bags much smaller than a sandwich bag with barely enough water to turn around in. That is why half of them look almost dead when you see them at the pet store. They are hardy little fish though and usually make it through shipment. In fact, we rarely had any dead fish no matter how many fish they bagged up together. They were rarely bagged more than 12 hours. If they had been bagged longer, there probably would've been a few dead ones. I once shipped 50 baby convict cichlids to a man via USPS in a bag with about 2 gallons of water. Not a single one died during the 3 day shipment. ANyway, moral to the story, there are companies that do much worse than the fairs do to the goldfish. Send them to Wal-Mart and let them see how many fish they kill every week due to lack of fish keeping knowledge. Goldfish aren't very smart anyhow. They have about the intelligence of a chicken. Cichlids OTOH have about the intelligence of a dog... especially Oscars. The fairs probably also change the water for the goldfish a lot more often than places like Wal-Mart so I doubt their fish suffer any until the little kids get them and try to make a water tornado in the bag. Even that probably isn't too bad since goldfish are river fish and like a good strong current in the water. That goes for the ones at the fair anyway. The fancy goldfish are freaks of nature (i don't think they even come from nature actually) and don't usually end up at fairs because they are more expensive. The fair fish are the same ones pet stores sell as feeder fish for big fish like Oscars. They are lucky the fair has them instead of the pet store.

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