People in western Slovakia are more likely to buy a live carp for Christmas than those who live in the east, a recent poll has shown.
Carp is the main course of a typical Slovak Christmas dinner, which is consumed on December 24. As part of the tradition, many Slovaks still buy their carp live, keeping it in their bath tub for a day or two before it is despatched to the Christmas dinner table. A recent survey has shown that a growing number of people prefer to buy processed frozen or chilled fish instead, however.
In the pre-Christmas survey for the Humánny Pokrok (Human Progress) civic association, polling agency Focus asked 1,005 respondents about their traditional Christmas Eve dinner. One in five respondents said they prefer to buy processed or frozen fish, while another fifth said they preferred live fish. Almost 14 per cent of respondents said they preferred to buy a live fish which was then slaughtered at the store upon payment, the SITA newswire wrote, citing the results of the survey.
There was no significant difference in carp-buying preferences depending on correspondents' household income, age or education. The tradition of purchasing a live carp is weakest in Košice Region and strongest on the other side of the country, in western Slovakia.
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When it came to the ethics of the practice, some 11 percent of respondents agreed that the sale of live carp should be banned, while 27 percent said they completely disagreed with that statement. Those who tended to agree with a ban numbered 18 percent, while those who tended to disagree amounted to 37 percent of respondents.
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