Antoine Goetschel: "There is a risk we usually strengthen animals we think are cute." Photograph: Martin Godwin
When Patrick Giger, a 34-year-old angler from the Swiss encampment of Horgen, expel his baited line in to Lake Zurich"s storm-swollen waters on an icy Feb sunrise last year, he could not have foresee the difficulty he would finish up disorder in to one side the 22lb dart that was shortly to trap itself on his hook. The day finished with the beast fish being devoured by Giger and his friends at a internal restaurant, but only a couple of months after Giger would face, on the instructions of the state prosecutor for the canton of Zurich, rapist charge for causing extreme pang to the animal after braggadocio to a internal journal that he had outlayed around 10 minutes, and exerted substantial earthy effort, alighting the fish.
The dart has left on to turn something of a print kid for the animal rights transformation in Switzerland. It has even captivated some-more than 6,000 "fans" on a Facebook page set up in the memory. But the predestine of this fish additionally acts to prominence the domestic groups in Switzerland over only how far to pull the animal rights legislation, already hailed as arguably the toughest anywhere in the world. The idealisation exam will come this Sunday when the nation will confirm in a referendum – or "people"s initiative" – either an animal should be represented by a counsel during any rapist hearing in that it is judged to be the "victim". The canton of Zurich has had only such a counsel – or "animal advocate", as the obligatory prefers to be called – given 1991, but the campaigners who garnered the 100,000 signatures compulsory to automatically trigger a inhabitant referendum are right away anticipating animal advocates will be compulsory by law in all twenty-six cantons.
Antoine Goetschel,
