Animal rights campaigners have urged the town of Aberaeron in Wales to replace its annual mackerel festival with a kinder celebration focused on cabbages.
The Welsh seaside community currently hosts a mackerel fiesta at the end of the fishing season. The event, described as a light-hearted funeral for the fast-swimming fishes, involves carrying a large papier mache fish through the town to the yacht club before it is blessed and burned at sunset.
PETA UK has reached out to the president of Aberaeron Yacht Club proposing the town host an Aberaeron Cabbage Fiesta instead. The animal rights organisation offered to provide a giant papier mache vegetable to replace the traditional fish model and suggested the switch would support local cabbage growers.
In the letter, PETA said, “ Celebrating life-giving plant produce rather than fish slaughter would be more in line with the compassion and warmth Wales is known for. Plus, you’d be supporting local growers, like Blaencamel Organic Farm, famed for its vibrant cabbage and fennel, amid 50 sustainable acres of fruit and veggies. It would also be an investment in Aberaeron, because animal-free diets are not only optimal for health, but also curb climate-heating emissions, water pollution, and land use by as much as 75%. “
Dawn Car, PETA Vice President of Vegan Projects, said, “Fish aren’t swimming vegetables — they’re thinking, feeling individuals who experience pain and fear just as we do. By celebrating Welsh-grown produce instead of hauling sensitive animals from the sea, Aberaeron could create a fiesta that’s kinder, greener, and rooted in a more compassionate future.”
Councillor Elizabeth Evans said fishing was “part of our heritage in Aberaeron“, while the “growing of cabbages is not“. She said that the views expressed in the letter did not reflect the town’s “lived experience as a community”, but that “the huge industrial trawlers which fish the waters around the UK are quite a different matter altogether.”
The animal rights group expressed hope that the proposal would inspire the coastal community to turn over a new leaf and allow the fishes to swim free in their natural environment.
