Peta has urged the paint manufacturer Farrow & Ball to rename colours that “normalise exploiting animals”.

Citing the colours Dead Salmon, Smoked Trout and Potted Shrimp, Peta said in a letter to Farrow & Ball’s colour curator that “renaming animal product-monikered paints would be a fun way to appeal to more conscious consumers”.

Yvonne Taylor, Peta’s vice-president of corporate projects, wrote that such names were insensitive. “Science concludes that fish are sentient, capable of feeling pain and fear,” she said. “They each have a distinct personality, can learn new information and enjoy complex social relationships.”

Taylor added that promoting fish farming, given its impact on the environment, was “at odds with Farrow & Ball’s commitment to sustainability”.

The letter also states that the colours Au Lait and Skimmed Milk White normalise the exploitation of cows, who on dairy farms are taken from their mothers within 36 hours of birth.

“Cows raised for dairy may spend their entire lives standing on concrete floors and being fed an unnatural diet that includes other animals, before they’re slaughtered at just five years old,” she said.

Crediting Farrow & Ball for having a range that is entirely cruelty-free and mostly vegan, Taylor said that making these changes would “make the range even more inclusive”.

“We hope the Farrow & Ball range will soon be entirely vegan – with Soft Distemper and Casein Distemper also evolving to become animal product-free – but until then, renaming colours that normalise animal abuse is one way to remind others that animals are not food but sentient individuals and members of the delicate ecosystem we all share,” she said.

With more than 9 million members and supporters globally, Peta’s mission statement centres on the opposition of speciesism – described on its website as “a human-supremacist worldview” that justifies the mistreatment of certain species.

Farrow & Ball declined to comment.