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Speak Out Against Animal Giveaways in Hampstead, MD!

Experts agree that fish are highly complex animals who have the same capacity to feel pain, fear, and stress as mammals do, and they deserve better than to be doled out as trinkets. However, PETA just learned that the Hampstead Volunteer Fire Company Carnival in Hampstead, Maryland, apparently hired a midway company to provide entertainment, which is doling out goldfish as prizes to its game booth attendees, scheduled through August 1. When kept in captivity, these animals require a sizeable amount of water (one goldfish requires at least 25 gallons!), climate control and filtration, regular aquarium maintenance, and ample enrichment. Most spontaneous recipients of these living, feeling “prizes” are hardly prepared for such a commitment, and the animals suffer as a result.

Orange and white goldfish with blue background

Also, Maryland statute §10-610 prohibits the giving away of a live animal “as a prize for, or inducement to enter, a contest, game, or other competition” without the approval of the Secretary of Agriculture. Even if the company has that approval, goldfish are sentient beings, and being carted from one event to the next, placed in tiny plastic bags without aeration/oxygen, and being jostled by booth winners is a miserable experience for these animals.

Please join PETA in politely urging the Hampstead Volunteer Fire Company to ask its midway provider to immediately exclude this booth and forgo animal giveaways at future events—then share this alert with everyone you know!

Send polite comments to:

Mr. James Dwyer, President
Hampstead Volunteer Fire Company
[email protected]

Hampstead Volunteer Fire Company Board of Managers
[email protected]

Please also leave a comment on their Facebook page:

Hampstead VFC’s Fundraising Facebook
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“Almost all of us grew up eating meat, wearing leather, and going to circuses and zoos. We never considered the impact of these actions on the animals involved. For whatever reason, you are now asking the question: Why should animals have rights?”

— Ingrid Newkirk, PETA Founder and co-author of Animalkind

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