In April 2003, The Royal Society published the results of investigations carried out by the Roslin Institute, a biotechnology research establishment located near Edinburgh, into the perception of pain in fish. The main thrust of the experiments was the injection, under laboratory conditions, of bee venom into the lips of live rainbow trout, followed up by behavioural analyses from which the apparently pre-determined conclusions were drawn.From 2003 onwards, the anti-angling homepage of PETA started quoting the Roslin Institute’s findings to underpin its own long-standing assertion that fish feel pain - this in spite of the fact that PETA was vehemently opposed to the use of animals for any kind of laboratory experimentation. The collective voice of PETA’s worldwide membership championed their cause as righteous and true. What a pity they hadn’t bothered to check the methods used by their ‘friends’ at the Roslin Institute before they gave their wholehearted backing to a clear example of that which they appeared to detest most of all.PETA (UK) was also soon providing a platform for the views of Dr. Lynn Sneddon (by then of Liverpool University) the publicity seeking chief scientist who’d led the original Roslin research. Dr. Sneddon’s rhetoric was hard hitting, as might be expected from someone apparently a political ally of an extremist animal rights group:"Really, it's kind of a moral question,” she stated. “Is your angling more important than the pain to the fish?"A fair point, if just a bit hypocritical, bearing in mind the sort of animal experiments Dr. Sneddon had herself conducted in the furtherment of her career - a point repeatedly missed amid the media furore that followed:Quite apart from the bee venom experiment, in the course of her flagship research project, Dr. Sneddon had also used the technique of DECEREBRATION, a process in which live anaesthetised rainbow trout had had their skulls cut open before the optic and olfactory lobes, together with the cerebellum, were removed from the rest of the brain using a vacuum pump. This was necessary to allow dissection of what was left of the fish’s brain to facilitate some of the neurological analyses required to authenticate Dr. Sneddon’s results - and even someone with only the slightest understanding of biology (a PETA activist perhaps) must realise that this is a terminal procedure.The whole paper can be found here: http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/picrender.fcgi? artid=1691351&blobtype=pdf*For the description of the technique scroll down to the bottom left of PAGE 2 and read – [2.METHODS (a) Electrophysiological recordings from the trigeminal ganglion.]Quite bizarrely - and this just proves how little time these organisations actually take to either read or think these things through - it is also reproduced in full on the anti fishing page of the Animal Liberation Front (NB. so anti-animal experimentation they openly attempt to bomb people they accuse of doing it):http://www.animalliberationfront.com/Practical/ Fishing--Hunting/Fishing/fishfeelpain.pdfPresumably they were too caught-up with sending letter bombs to vivisectionists to realise they were actually publishing the work of one! The simple point is this: the vast, vast majority of people in this country don’t buy into the naïve extremist views of organisations like PETA and those terrorist groups for which they are a front. They represent a minority viewpoint. Their lazy propaganda may fool a few hundred thousand Americans who think Edinburgh is in England, as well as a number of impressionable teenagers over here who have yet to learn how to distinguish between hyperbole and fact, but the British general public tends to be more discerning. Minority and extreme viewpoints don’t get much of a look-in – when was the last time we elected a class war candidate to parliament?Some in PETA UK like to think that, as in the States, they can influence public opinion by recruiting ‘beautiful people’ to spout their poorly thought nonsense. Others seem to think that PETA is like Sinn Fein to the ALF’s Provisional IRA, but what they don’t quite get is a handful of easily led cranks doesn’t amount to the collective aspirations of three quarters of the population of a small country. They lack any credible level of support, so the prospect of any UK government inviting them (or any of their friends) for so much as a round of bu88ering is non-existent. Quite apart from the revenue angling contributes to the EA through rod licences, three to four million anglers in the UK equals 3-4 million votes. PETA don’t have half that many worldwide and Sir Paul McCartney doesn’t even pay UK tax…