I didn't realise...

That sending fish via post is illegal and you can be prosecuted for it?

Pet Shop Owner admits animal cruelty over sending live fish through the post.

Shouldn't the RSPCA be spending it's time on helping animals that actually need them? Like some of the filthy pet shops, puppy mills, farmers who let their livestock rot to death in fields, etc..... >.<

As long as the fish are packaged properly then I'd rather buy fish from a respectable breeder who has looked after them well rather than a giant chain shop like Pets at Home who don't know the first thing about caring for fish and leave them to die in miserable conditions.

It is a very grey area, reading that article the "problem" was using the wrong courier company that do not carry livestock, same as the Royal Mail their policy states they dont transport live fish, but parcels marked live fish are not stopped. You can post fish as long as you use a registered livestock carrier (ANC are/were allowed to carry livestock) and the boxes MUST be marked "live fish" or "live animals". It looks like that is how the RSPCA have managed to prosecute them, purely on the lack of live amimal labeling and using a non registered company.

Ahhh I see. I wonder why then the Royal Mail doesn't stop parcels when they obviously say that they contain live fish. Seems odd to say it's against policy but then they don't do anything to stop people from doing it.

I am not sure on that one either, if you go on the royal mail website it states they do not "handle" live fish, I know lots of people that use royal mail, I think there is a loophole that if a parcel is in the system marked as live fish, it is sent on asap.

Hello Im new and not sure if this is an old post or not.
Royal Mail do accept live fish but they must be fry only although people abuse this and send larger fish this way.

Lillydane wrote:Hello Im new and not sure if this is an old post or not.
Royal Mail do accept live fish but they must be fry only although people abuse this and send larger fish this way.

Yup this is exactly true.

But we abuse this and send larger fish purely because if packaged correctly the loss rate and potential damage to fish is reduced to exponentially low percentages.

Ah right, I see That's interesting to know. I still think the RSPCA's time would be better of spent helping animals that are desperate instead of saying "Nope, sorry, nothing we can do" to so many cases >.<

Don't get me wrong, when they do good, they do great. They've just done some terrible things under the name of animal welfare too.