<snip>
The town council passed a ruling "on the treatment of domestic animals, which will go into effect in a fortnight", council official Giampietro Mosca told AFP.
The text, acknowleged as "avant-garde" by its backer, bans the sale of coloured chicks at fairs, the use of small animals as competition prizes as well as outlawing goldfish bowls.
"A fish kept in a bowl has a distorted view of reality...and suffers because of this. Also, this type of receptacle generally doesn't have a filter and doesn't allow for good oxygenation of the water, unlike in rectangular aquariums" Mosca explained.
"This story about the goldfish, which has gone around Italy, seems a little irrelevant and people have mocked it a bit, but it has a very specific educational sense, especially for the little ones", he added.
http://www.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,4057,10248329%255E13762,00.html