Four dolphins are being kept in a 10mx20m chlorinated pool at the Wake Bali resort. In the exhibit, tourists are allowed to pet and hug the dolphins, which have gone nearly blind from the chlorine. On top of that, the pool in which they are kept overlooks the ocean, as if the conditions were not cruel enough.
Dolphins are highly intelligent and sentient creatures that have the ability to form complex family ties and a language outside of our comprehension. To keep them confined and drenched in chemicals is inhumane and wrong.
I don't feel that this post needs to be extremely long because the photos and logic speak for themselves.
Please sign the Change.org petition here to make sure our voices are heard.
A month or so ago I posted a quick take on the video of Oklahoma students performing a dance routine with the bodies of cats intended to be used for educational purposes (see that post here), and today I am going to attempt to shed a little more light on the subject. Dissection of animals in the classroom has become a rather touchy subject throughout recent years. Debates have become quite heated as the treatment and production of the donated animals, as well as the actual necessity of the activity and how comfortable the students themselves are with the process. So let's dive in: The pros and cons of animal dissections in schools and why, ultimately, I believe that the activity should be banned.
Photo from pragmaticmom.com
We will begin with the positive effects of using real animals for scientific studies in schools. To begin with, studies have shown that many students better absorb the material being taught to them when they have hands-on experience. By dissecting the actual animal in their textbooks, they are able to comprehend the structures and functions of the body systems more easily than in a slideshow presentation, worksheet, or video. Others argue that once the animal is dead, why waste its body by simply disposing of it instead of using it to further our children's knowledge of the workings of the natural world around them. Another argument is that it is an experience, similar to a tradition or right of passage, and an important part of a student's life. I am not going to discount the importance of experiences in a person's life and how they shape them. I myself dissected a cow bone in the third grade, as well as two rats in my high school career. However, in my personal experience, these activities could have been just as easily completed on paper or virtually, as I had a solid comprehension of the material we were being taught and the formaldehyde fumes made me light-headed. Experiences are very important in a person's life, especially the developing youth that are going to shape the future of our world, and I am no one to discount that. However I do not believe that education should be the reason for any kind of suffering, and on that note, we move into the arguments for the banning of dissections in schools.
In my previous post about the students in Oklahoma, we witnessed the abuse of the bodies of cats that were intended for educational use. This is not an exception, this is not the only case. Students from Newport Harbor High School "were pictured [online] posing with the dead animals. One student held up a cat's head and pretended to lick it. The head of another turned up in a student’s locker," reported the Pacific Standard.
The bodies of these animals are being abused by some teenagers, and causing emotional harm to others. In some schools, students are not given the option to opt out of dissecting animals, no matter how squeamish or uncomfortable they may feel. The acquisition of animals for these classes is not always honest. Yes, there are companies who breed animals specifically to donate their bodies to science, but there are also "donations" from pounds and pet shelters, slaughterhouses, pet stores, and even companion animals who "escaped" from their homes. Sometimes the animals are not dead when they are injected with formaldehyde, and must suffer a slow and painful death at the hand of the chemical. Others are cruelly killed by the workers in supply factories. PETA describes an instance where "one rabbit, still alive after being gassed, tried to crawl out of a
wheelbarrow full of water and dead rabbits. Employees laughed as a
coworker held the rabbit’s head underwater and pulled him out just as
death seemed near, repeating the process again and again until, bored
with the “game,” the employee held the animal’s head underwater long
enough to drown him." These acts are horrific and the "educational experience" provided from the bodies of these abused earthlings is not even close to being worthy of their suffering.
Banning dissection programs is not the same as depriving the students from an important biological lesson, there are plenty of cruelty-free options and programs designed to give the students a comprehensive understanding of the inner workings of organ systems. PETA provides a list of good programs here. These virtual animals provide the students with the option to complete the dissection without the needless death of an animal, as well as provide the more sensitive students with a preferred alternative to the real thing.
I understand that not all schools may be able to afford enough computers for students to run these programs, and that is not the school's fault. I do however, believe that the killing of innocent creatures for the purpose of elementary science is not necessary. Cruelty is not a necessary part of learning, and if anything should be minimalized in the educational system.
Caged dogs unable to move provided by Huffington Post
Yulin's dog eating festival has been around since the 1990's to welcome and celebrate the summer solstice each June. This year, the city of Yulin is expected to slaughter 10,000 dogs for the event. There are many issues that this festival brings forward, and this year all of them have been brought to light and met with more opposition than ever before. (THE IMAGES PRESENTED IN THIS ARTICLE ARE GRAPHIC)
The first point of concern is that China does not have animal protection laws, it is not illegal to eat dogs or cats in China; in fact, they are a common dish in the country. It is not their usual consumption that is the issue (as I will cover soon.) The local officials in Yulin claim that the festival is illegal and nonexistent, though it has been a reoccurring event for the past 25 years. This puts the blame and responsibility on the public, who are the ones celebrating the festival to begin with. Thus the festival has run unopposed by officials, however protesters have gathered each year to buy dogs off of participants, pray for dogs killed, and attempt to liberate the animals from the slaughterhouses.
The second issue is the health and sanitation, or lack there of, that is applied to the Yulin festival. Accounts of Rabies have increased greatly in Yulin in recent years. Michael Koziol of The Sydney Morning Herald reported that "there had been 338 reported cases between 2002 and 2006, making Yulin one of China's most affected cities." The blood and internal organs of the dogs slaughtered are strewn about slaughterhouse floors, causing even more dangers to health. Not only does this festival harm sentient animals, but it holds dangers to the human participants as well.
This brings us to the reason the festival is being protested: the treatment and acquisition of the dogs used in the celebration. Not all of the dogs used are bred for the festival or donated by willing owners and breeders. Household pets and strays from all over China are swiped from homes and off the streets, stolen from their families and lives to be slaughtered for the entertainment of another city halfway across the country. Children are losing their beloved companions for a horrific bloodbath that steals the lives of thousands of dogs (and cats) yearly.
Finally, we address the treatment of the dogs that are to "participate" in the Yulin festival. The dogs are packed into tiny cages, several in each one, providing no room for movement. Some even die of starvation or dehydration before they are taken out for slaughter. Some are burnt alive, some are boiled. Andrea Dung from the Duo Duo project claimed she witnessed dogs being slaughtered while "still wagging their tails," reports the UK Independent. The slaughterhouses are filled with carcasses of skinned dogs and those being drained of blood with their fur still intact. The conditions are truly horrific and can be described more accurately in pictures than in words. This is a second warning: these photos are graphic.
Dog being boiled alive as tweeted by Ricky Gervais
Dog meat preparation photo from The Guardian
A dog being burned alive, as tweeted by Ricky Gervais
Many will say that it is not my place as a westerner and someone who is not native to Yulin or China to criticize the culture and tradition and demand change. But the westerners are not the only ones protesting. Many Chinese citizens have voiced their disapproval online and at the protests in the city itself.
Times are changing, and traditions must too. In order to evolve, some things must be left behind. We can learn to live in peace but we must stop pointless slaughter like this to do so. If you want your voice to be heard make sure you sign the petition to stop the festival here and tag your photos, tweets, and other social medias with #stopyulin2015. We can change the world and we can save lives if we try together. The Sydney Morning Herald The Huffington Post TIME The Guardian1 & 2
Until school ends in a couple of weeks I will not be able to produce an in-depth and better informed article on the controversy of using real animal corpses in academic dissections, but this video has recently brought the topic to light again. A very reputable charter school in Oklahoma, Harding Charter Preparatory High School, posted a video on their Facebook page of some of their students dancing with dead cats to the meow mix jingle. The cat corpses were to be used for in-class dissections, an activity that the Humane Society and PETA are now aggressively tackling at the school. The Humane Society recommends "the school could switch to plastic models, while PETA said it has software available for schools that wish to use computer models," stated a Huffington Post article.
Harding Charter's Facebook page is currently shut down and the students in the video (who still attend the school) are facing repercussions.
The Huffignton Post article touched briefly on the methods in which the cats and dogs used for dissections are acquired, but I will not go in-depth in that until school is over and I can provide a more comprehensive and detailed post on the acquisition and experimentation of dissection-destined animals.
Kim Kardashian has always been a perpetrator of the fur business, often photographed in very large and expensive real fur coats, and she has always faced retaliation from viewers because of it. However, recently a video filmed at one of her book signings shows activists calling her a murderer and being removed from the store. I understand that fashion is a way for Kim to demonstrate her status, but the fact that she is simply ignoring the suffering behind her coats is very aggravating indeed. She has not issued any statements regarding her coats and does not confront her fans who ask her to change her ways.
The fur industry is brutal, small mammals (like rabbits and minks) are farmed in horrible confined conditions, skinned alive, and then have their bodies dumped in a massive pile. Not only is the industry wasteful, but it is inhumane and murderous.
There is very high quality faux fur on the market and it is becoming very hard to tell the difference, if Kim really wanted to use her fame for the greater good or any reason outside of being famous, she would switch to faux and show her support for her fellow earthlings. Not only would she then be taking some responsibility, but she would also be providing her fans with an affordable and doable action that they could take to help better our planet.
The International Whaling Committee (IWC) has rejected Japan's most recent attempt to reinstate the whaling business under the guise of "scientific research." Japan requested permission to kill 330 minke whales a year for the next 12 years in order to gather information on "understand[ing] the Antarctic marine ecosystem and learn[ing] the whales’
population size required for a return to sustainable commercial hunting," as reported by International Business Times (IBT). The plan was known as Newrep-A, and was a very poor attempt to justify the slaughter of the animals. Japan has appealed for permission to hunt whales repeatedly since their license was revoked last year by the International Court of Justice, the highest court in the world.
Children observing a Minke whale head outside of Tokyo (photo from IBC)
Although Japan has announced they intend to resume the hunts in 2015 or 2016, the actual demand for whale meat in the country has been on the decline, as reported by CBC News. Commercial whaling has been outlawed since 1987 and now (actually ever) is definitely not the time to begin again. The planet is in a very delicate place environmentally and whales all over the world have been in trouble since the 80's. Japan does not have the right to slaughter thousands of Minke Whales just as no other nation has the right to slaughter Blue, Humpback, or Grey whales (and all the others). Of course illegal poachers are still running rampant throughout the seas, but at least official governments no longer have the choice to murder these intelligent beings.
I am glad to see that the highest court in the world, the true final say, is prevailing on the side of the whales. People all over are beginning to recognize the true impact we have had on this world and the true power we have to reverse it.
Rejoice! For the minke whales are (legally) protected once again!
Photo from LA Whale Watching
To read the IBT article click here To read the CBC News article click here To read the Guardian article click here To read Japan's proposal, Newrep-A click here
