Recreational Whinge:  I read an article this week about how pet shops in southwest China are offering fish tattooed with patterns and lucky characters intended to bring their owners good fortune and happiness.

Tropical parrot fish are usually used for tattooing, often with the Chinese characters meaning “May your business boom.”  Lasers are used to tattoo the fish.

No one has as yet done or published any studies to indicate what damage tattooing might have on fish.  But just from my opinion, I bet it does have some physiological negative impact and at some level I bet it causes stress to the fish while they do whatever they do to keep the fish still so they can use the laser on it.

There are so many cruel things we humans do to animals.  Some many of us live with and at some level accept, while others we cannot accept at all.  I’ll save that whinge for another day, but for today, I just think how incredibly stupid to treat fish this way.

If you want to wish someone good luck in business, just say so or buy them a bloody card!

The Positive Spin:  Hmmm, not sure.  Is this any better than when a Belgian artist in China started tattooing pigs a few years back?  Is this any different than how in many countries around the world it’s acceptable to eat one’s pets?  There’s a debate here at the moment to make it illegal to eat your dog, after a family recently BBQ’d their pooch and invited friends, relatives and neighbours over to share in the feast.  This is completely acceptable in some parts of the world, but our Western sensibilities sometimes make us forget that there are people in the world with different perspectives, values and beliefs than us.  We have to find more ways of understanding how each other evaluates their own ethical decisions, versus just judging them for the choices they’ve made.

Although I still think tattooing fish is a crap idea, I appreciate how important sending messages of good luck are in the Chinese culture and therefore I was willing to explore the history of this idea a bit more.

I know I am a hypocrite on my statements sometimes about animals because I still eat meat.  But you have my word that I won’t eat my cats or tattooed fish.