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Activists point to widespread animal abuse

Taiwan has some of the world's most comprehensive

laws covering the treatment of animals, but the

actual enforcement of these laws is another matter entirely

 

By Gavin Phipps

STAFF REPORTER

<http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/feat/photo/2005/03/27/2003163866>Sunday,

Mar 27, 2005,Page 17

 

Ask anyone on the street their views regarding

the need for animal welfare and chances are a

vast majority will, on moral or religious

grounds, have strong opinions in favor of

treating animals with the same respect as humans.

Despite this, animal abuse remains an unavoidable fact of life in Taiwan.

 

Chickens are inhumanely slaughtered in public at

wet markets, the sale of dog meat continues,

traditional Chinese medicine stores continue to

sell parts of endangered animals, and take a

stroll down Taipei's infamous Snake Alley on any

given day and the sight of snakes awaiting their slaughter is inescapable.

 

With such widespread abuse, the public could be

forgiven for supposing the nation is void of any

laws governing the welfare of the nation's

non-human inhabitants. In reality, however,

Taiwan has some of the world's most comprehensive

laws governing the treatment of animals.

 

When the government implemented the Animal

Protection

Law<http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/feat/photo/2005/03/27/2003163867>

in November 1998, Taiwan became only the 54th

country to introduce laws pertaining to the welfare of animals.

 

Recently captured stray dogs, above, at a shelter

in Taipei await the attention of a veterinary

surgeon. A sick brown bear, below, at Kaohsiung's

Shoushan Zoo is shown in a photo taken covertly by activists.

 

The Animal Protection

Law<http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/feat/photo/2005/03/27/2003163868>

covers the treatment of all animals, domestic,

wild and livestock. Laws cover everything from

maltreatment and abandonment to the use of

animals in gambling and even the age of those who

can legally be held responsible for the well

being of a domestic animal. Fines against those

who flout the rules range from NT$2,000 to

NT$2500,000, and in certain cases abuses can lead to imprisonment.

 

Yet while Taiwan has such comprehensive laws,

many of them only exist on paper. The actual

enforcement of the laws is another matter

entirely. The Council of Agriculture (COA,

¦æ¬F°|¹A·~·|) works tirelessly to enforce the

law, but with a mere six full-time animal

inspectors employed to cover the whole of Taipei

City and its environs and with even fewer to

monitor other areas, it's hardly surprising that little gets done.

 

" They have some of the best laws in the world,

but they simply don't enforce them and there are

certainly not enough inspectors to do the job, "

said the International Primate Protection

League's (IPPL) Taiwan field representative,

Charles Shuttleworth. " When the police do act

they do a very a good job indeed, but they could do a lot more. "

 

One of the first foreign nationals to take a

vocal interest in animal welfare in Taiwan,

Shuttleworth has been at the forefront of animal

conservation since 1969. And while he feels that

a lot more could be done to ensure that animals

are protected, he has seen some remarkable changes over the past 30 years.

 

" It used to be terrible. People would chop limbs

off animals while they were still alive. People

would put monkeys in cages and leave them out in

the sun because they believed it would make

[monkeys] smaller and cuter, " he said. " I even

saw a man put a tube up a crocodile's [anus],

blow air into it and then jump on the creature so

it would make what he considered to be a funny sound. "

 

Horrific abuses such as these may still take

place, but they are kept a long way from the

public's gaze. Like Shuttleworth, veterinary

surgeon and Secretary General of the Animal

Protection Association of the Republic of China

(APA,) Huang Ching-rong has also witnessed a lot

of positive changes in the way people view animals in Taiwan over the years.

 

" I remember when animal rights first became an

issue in the 1960s. It all started with the water

buffalo. Farmers were so fed up with their cattle

roaming onto roads only to be hit by cars that

they petitioned the government to dig ditches at

the sides of roads to stop their cattle from being killed, " Huang said.

 

According to Huang, there are so many loopholes

in the laws that individuals who harm animals are

rarely, if ever, prosecuted for the correct reasons.

 

" You could kill a dog, dump the body in the

street, and chances are you'd be charged with the

unlawful disposal of garbage rather than the

killing of a domestic animal, " said Huang. " And

you only have to look at the huge number of feral

dogs roaming the streets to realize that fines

for abandonment don't work at all. "

 

The issue of feral dogs has long been the most

publicized of all animal-welfare issues. The law

currently states than any dog found without a

collar or identification chip should be held in a

shelter for 10 days. If the animal remains

unclaimed after this period it can then be

legally put to sleep by lethal injection. Some

pounds ignore this regulation, however, and for

financial reasons put dogs down after only four or five days.

 

Animal rights groups like the Life

Conservationist Association (LCA) are against the

slaughter of any animal, but it is not only the

act of putting dogs to sleep that has them

appalled. The manner in which many dogs are put

down is contrary to legal guidelines, they say.

 

" The dog pounds contract out the task of

injecting the dogs to private contractors. Sure,

there might be a trained vet among them, but this

is not always the case, " said the LCA's Hank Lee.

 

" A lot of dogs get injected in the incorrect part

of their anatomy by inexperienced handlers.

Instead of a relatively painless and quick death

these dogs often suffer horrendously before finally dying. "

 

While the feral-dog problem continues to cause

debate and will, according to the LCA's Lee,

" quite possibly get worse before it gets better, "

one of the most vocal of all of Taiwan's animal

rights groups, the Environment and Animal Society

of Taiwan has enjoyed great success in its

campaign to clean up the way in which the nation's slaughterhouses operate.

 

Every year 300 million chickens, 31 million

ducks, 10 million pigs, 6 million geese, 364,000

turkeys, 260,000 goats and roughly 40,000 cows

are slaughtered in order to satisfy the nation's

craving for meat. A majority of these animals are

slaughtered in one of the 80 carefully monitored

government-run abattoirs, but others are not so

lucky and are killed at private slaughterhouses

that still practice inhumane methods of animal slaughter.

 

" Until four years ago nearly every slaughterhouse

disregarded the law, " said EAST's Director, Wu Hung.

 

" Pigs had their feet bound to stop them from

walking in order to make the meat richer. Cows

were starved of food and force-fed water for

three to four days before slaughter in order to

make them heavier and chickens were often put

into feathering machines still alive, " he said.

 

On his once-regular visits to abattoirs, Wu not

only witnessed pre-slaughter abuse, but also saw

the inhumane methods employed by slaughterhouse

workers to kill the animals. Pigs, cows, chickens

and goats were often slain by having their

throats cut and were rarely, if ever stunned and put to sleep beforehand.

 

EAST's awareness campaign caused such a commotion

and had such an effect on the general public that

the COA was finally forced to act.

 

" We were very concerned about the way in which

slaughterhouses were being run, " said the COA's

Andrew Wang. " We now have 300 inspectors who

visit and monitor slaughterhouses to ensure that

they are both hygienic and employ humane methods of slaughter. "

 

By law, all abattoirs must now first stun an

animal with an electric prod and, when the animal

is asleep, fire a single shot from a bolt gun

into the beast's head. Slaughterhouses found to

employ inhumane practices now face fines from

NT$100 to NT$500,000. The COA also has the right

to close operations of any slaughterhouse that

openly or continually flouts the regulations.

 

The COA may be confident that it has eradicated

inhumane practices of animal slaughter, but EAST

is not convinced. Since it's campaign made

headline news, the animal-rights group has been

denied access to nearly all of the nation's

slaughterhouses. And, according to the group, it

is quite possible that 60 percent of pigs are still being killed inhumanely.

 

Local animal-rights groups may remain wary of how

the government deals with laws pertaining to the

rights of domestic and farm animals, but one area

in which the NGOs and the government have

successfully worked together is that of outlawing

the capture and sale of indigenous wildlife, especially primates.

 

Until the late 1980s the sight of illegally

imported orangutans and local primates was

commonplace. But Taiwan's inclusion in the

Convention on International Trade in Endangered

Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) has

reduced the once-widespread importation of endangered animals.

 

On a more local scale, the opening of the

Pingtung Rescue Center for Endangered and Wild

Animals in 1993 enabled authorities to place any

illegally imported animal into proper care. Since

its opening, the center has rescued more than

1,000 animals and now participates in educational

exchange programs with institutes overseas.

 

" The media attention given to the CITES agreement

and the opening of the Pintung Rescue Center have

been pivotal in altering people's concepts of how

we view and treat endangered animals, " said Huang.

 

" Without them Taiwan would not have made such

great inroads in the area of animal welfare, " he said.

 

The sale and importation of primates may have

successfully been stemmed, but the plight of the

Formosan macaque has now taken center stage.

While no longer critically endangered, the

Formosan macaque remains, according to the World

Conservation Union's (IUCN) Red List of

Threatened Animals, at risk of extinction in the

wild in the medium-term future. Every year dozens

of them are killed or maimed by wire snares and poisons laid out by hunters.

 

" There is not and never has been a government

regulation on the number of macaques that can be

caught and moved, and if there was I'm sure the

farmers would complain, " said Lee Ling-ling of

the Department of Zoology at National Taiwan

University. " Until some kind of legal framework

can be settled upon, it's a no-win situation for

everybody concerned, " Lee added.

 

Once hunted solely for its bones, which were

boiled down into a broth and drunk by young men

who believed the concoction would give them

everlasting virility, the trapping of macaques

was outlawed in 1989. While it is illegal to

slaughter macaques, even trespassing ones,

farmers can apply for a permit to trap the

primates. The unlicensed killing of a macaque is

punishable with a lengthy prison sentence or a

hefty fine or both, depending on the circumstances.

 

Dr. Shirley McGreal, Chairwoman

International Primate Protection League

POB 766

Summerville SC 29484, USA

Ph. 843-871-2280: Fax: 843-871-7988: www.ippl.org

 

" Humans think they are smarter than dolphins because

we build cars and buildings and start wars etc...and

all that dolphins do is swim in the water, eat fish

and play around. Dolphins believe that they are

smarter for exactly the same reasons. "

--Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy