Should I start worrying about myself?  After all, for the second time in just 4 months I am actually agreeing with an issue PETA has raised! (See my post on Ringling Bros. Circus Abuse for the first such occasion.)

Now, PETA has come out very strongly against a video on YouTube showing what is apparently a specialty of certain Chinese chefs who have come up with a way to keep a fish alive while deep frying it. In the video you can actually witness the fish lying in a platter of sauce, attempting to breathe, while diners begin picking chunks out of it to eat.

The Daily Telegraph reports that PETA called it “disgusting” and that a PETA spokesperson said that “every decent person should be shocked when anyone mocks or abuses a helpless dying animal”.

I couldn’t agree more. I may differ with PETA when it comes to eating meat (as long as the animal is killed for food, not sport, and killed as quickly and painlessly as possible), but watching this video shocked and sickened me to my core. The suffering that they are obviously putting that creature through is unspeakable.

Obviously, the Chinese don’t believe in karma.

For those of you with a strong stomach (seriously), here is the video. I strongly caution anyone with a combination of a strong conscience and a weak stomach not to watch this, as you quite possibly will have nightmares.

I’m ordinarily that last person to promote anything that PETA does, but for once, I’m on their side of an argument. The undercover video of Ringling Bros. Circus animals being abused for no reason goes entirely beyond the pale and shows behavior that is disgusting and reprehensible. Quite frankly, it makes me want to boycott circuses from now on, as I refuse to give any money to support such inhumane behavior.

In this video, you can clearly see the pain inflicted on the animals, as the huge elephants flinch and bellow with the blows of the bull hook. You can also clearly see that some of this is done for absolutely no apparent reason and, even worse, is sometimes apparently done entirely out of sheer malice (accompanied by vulgar insults).

It’s really sad to see and makes me really question the whole idea of a circus and makes me really wonder what kind of activities go into making so many otherwise-wild animals ‘trained’ and ‘domesticated’.