Dongping Association calls for boycott of tourist animal farms: animals are not entertainment
The Taiwan Animal Equality Association yesterday held the premiere of the "Animals Are Not Entertainment Trilogy" documentary (click here for the tour schedule), exposing the current situation at seventeen animal exhibition farms across Taiwan, China, and giving a voice to animals from the perspective of children and young people. The association believes that the brief few minutes of interaction between visitors and animals comes at the cost of a lifetime of captivity for the animals. This is neither "education" nor "conservation," so it launched a petition calling on parents and teachers to boycott tourist animal venues that treat animals improperly.
Documentary Records the Current Situation of Animal Exhibition Farms
The "Animals Are Not Entertainment Trilogy" took one year to film, documenting the current situation at seventeen animal exhibition farms across Taiwan, China. In order to "perform," the monkeys of the Hualien Monkey Corps have to wear military uniforms and perform military movements; the calves at Hualien Chao Feng Farm are forced away from their mothers as soon as they are born, and visitors pay to feed the calves with bottles; at Taichung Flying Cow Ranch, visitors line up in long queues to experience milking cows.
Taichung's Sky Horse Ranch had previously made the news multiple times for animal abuse: visitors ride on protected Aldabra giant tortoises to take photos, and the tortoise shells are visibly damaged; alpacas, commonly known as grass mud horses, are already full but are still fed by visitors, and their bodies are balding and ulcerated without treatment; marmots are kept in glass tanks that are too small, causing the marmots to keep ramming into the glass.
Lin Yishan, chairperson of the Taiwan Animal Equality Association, said that while filming the documentary and visiting these animal exhibition farms, she found that Taichung Sky Horse Ranch, which has repeatedly been reported for animal abuse, still sees a constant influx of visitors, and the ranch keeps introducing new attractions, bringing in more rare and exotic animals and adding more "interactive experience" activities between people and animals.
"Many times, adults' education is not up to standard." Pei Jiaqi, a professor at the Institute of Wildlife Conservation at National Pingtung University of Science and Technology, said that on his daughter's second-grade field trip to the Donggang Fish Market in Pingtung, the commentator placed a live giant grouper on the ground while giving explanations. His daughter could not stand it and asked for the fish to be put back in the water. Unexpectedly, on the way back from the field trip, the teacher thought his daughter was being a busybody and kept teasing her, sarcastically saying in front of all the students: "You're really something, so righteous!" His daughter was unmoved and felt that what she had done was right, but she was curious why the teacher would say that.
