Poland to ban live carp sales

Photo: wikipedia

The fish is a staple dish of the Polish Christmas, and this December, Poles spent 200 million zloty (47.9 million euro) on 20 tonnes of carp.

“As is the case every year, you could see suffocating fish bouncing about in plastic bags outside shops,” commented Civic Platform MP Pawel Suski, in an interview with the Rzeczpospolita daily.

Suski, who leads the Parliamentary Group for Friends of Animals – a group chiefly made up of Civic Platform MPs – noted that technically, provisions were introduced in 2012 that stipulated that fish purchased in bags had to be sold in an adequate amount of water.

However, he claims that the laws are not being observed.

“In accordance with the [new] provisions, a qualified person will have to kill the fish at the point where it is sold,” Suski said.

“Consumers are not capable of doing this kind of slaughter at home.”

Jacek Bozek, who heads Klub Gaja, an organisation that has been promoting ecological issues since 1988, says the tradition of keeping carp at home in bathtubs in the run up to Christmas is outdated.

He noted that during the communist period, there was a lack of refrigerators, and that putting carp into the bathtub “was the only way of keeping the fish fresh.

“Today, the situation is completely different,” he stressed. (nh)