When Is It Illegal To Eat A Live Goldfish?

By Amy E. Feldman

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) – When is it illegal to eat a live goldfish?

A drunken man from Wales won a goldfish at a county fair, and then ate it alive. And posted it on Facebook. See, you thought it couldn't get stupider. But wait, there's more—he was arrested, and last month was banned from owning a pet for three years, and fined approximately $200.

One wonders if authorities feared he'd eat Fido. Also, one wonders: how could someone even possibly face animal cruelty charges if there's nothing illegal about eating seafood five minutes after it's been killed—sometimes by throwing it into a vat of boiling water? The answer is that in Wales, the law says that eating a live goldfish is illegal. Yep, they've got a law about that. Not so in the U.S., although eating an animal alive could be considered animal cruelty even if a state doesn't explicitly forbid it. The crime of animal cruelty is about the mental process of the human being and the suffering of the animal. The mental process of fishing for food or even for sport is not the same as enjoying the torturing of an animal—including those of the marine variety. There is some debate over how long a live goldfish would live in the digestive tract and whether that is more or less cruel than fishing, spearing, or boiling it, while the ultimate result may be the death of the animal, the suffering during the process is one animal control officers and the law take seriously, regardless of whether the animal is considered by most people to be a pet or a platter.