Weird Fish Drinking Festival draws ire of European Version of PETA

The European version of PETA, Global Action in the Interest of Animals, has their tail fins in a twist over a traditional festival held each year in Geraardsbergen, Belgium.

The yearly Krakelingen Festival in the rural Flanders area of Geraardsbergen continues holding the annual festival which consists of (I love this!) drinking live fish with wine and then throwing doughnut-shaped bread rolls - the krakelingen - to onlookers.

From IHT --

For centuries, thousands of revelers in this part of Belgium have celebrated the Krakelingen festival - named after the bread that will be thrown to the townspeople. The pageant, commemorating the onset of spring, combines pagan and Christian symbols and culminates in the consumption of tiny live fish immersed in red wine at a ceremony presided over by three men dressed as druids.

The ritual has aroused the fury of animal rights campaigners, who claim it is cruel and anachronistic and have succeeded in limiting the number of people who can down the fish to around two dozen a year.

How hard is it to swallow the drunk fish? Sounds like not bad - if you're a little tipsy....

(Van Acker, the senior Roman Catholic priest in this rural area of Flanders, is undertaking one of his more unusual pastoral duties: drinking live fish, washed down with red wine.)

The tiny grayish fish, known as grondeling, which are often used as bait by fishermen, are usually no longer than 2 to 3 centimeters, or about an inch. Though in some years they are larger and therefore difficult to swallow, De Padt says the drinker generally doesn't have a problem.

"Sometimes they are still trembling a little in your mouth," he says, but normally they have stopped moving by the time they are consumed. "You don't taste them - but the wine is good," he added, referring to the French red table wine in which the fish meets its end. More...