【AWSEL Issue】An Overview of Animal Exhibition Industry in Taiwan
So, I’ve been wanting to discuss some welfare issues in English for a while, and I guess this is finally it. Most of the writings from me have been in Traditional Chinese since their target audience is the Taiwanese public but I think it’s worth giving it a try to reach a wider audience that may also be interested in animal welfare science by occasionally writing in English about some issues in Taiwan, or perhaps across the globe(and also to practice my English writing).
Regarding the topic, I think it may be a good idea to start with something ‘closer to home’, something I’m more familiar with, and that is: an overview of the animal exhibition industry in Taiwan (I know most may be way more interested in the relationship between China and Taiwan when my home country is being mentioned. Sorry to disappoint those who are anticipating that sort of topic). For those who don’t know this, I’ve been working in the industry with the Taiwanese government in the aim of improving the welfare conditions of exhibited animals for approximately a year or so now, and even it may fall as a bit naive, I believe I’m qualified enough to at least give a comment or two on this topic.
What is the Animal Exhibition Industry?
To begin with, I think it’s probably important to define what ‘animal exhibition’ means in the country. According to the Animal Exhibition Regulation(動物展演管理辦法), which serves under the Animal Protection Act(動物保護法), the act of exhibiting an animal basically covers any form of animal display, performance or human-animal interaction in public. Some common forms of animal exhibition include animal cafes/restaurants, recreational farms, zoos, aquaria and etc.
Before the legislation was in place, the practitioners’ actions and the ways they treated their animals had been giving the public a sense of the industry’s disregard for their animals’ welfare at the time. With the pressure from several animal protection groups in the country, the mishap happened during the transportation of a hippopotamus Ah-he (阿河) then became the last straw of the public’s tolerance for the unregulated industry. Regarding the story of Ah-he, the animal had fallen from 2 metres above the ground when he was trying to escape during a transportation trip, and his injuries weren’t properly treated at the right time that it later caused his tragic death. Before this, he was also being poorly taken of by the farm that owned him. The media and the animal protection groups then went wild, and this further provoked outrage across the country. Due to this incident, the government finally decided to take the first step to face and tackle the issue in the animal exhibition industry; thus, established the animal exhibition regulation in 2015.
Major Issues in the Industry
Despite having the legislation in place, there still have been several fundamental, I would say, issues and challenges in the industry that are in an urgent need to be overcome. I don’t consider myself an expert, and here I just want to share some of my observations and personal experiences that I’ve gained from my work about the industry so far. Hopefully, this is still worth to be provided as some insights and to draw a picture of the industry that is probably slightly closer to reality than how the businesses advertise themselves and how the more radical animal protection/rights groups portray the industry.
Before entering the rest of the discussion, I would first like to start with a simple question: ‘why are the general welfare standards in the animal exhibition industry in Taiwan so low?’. Well, my simple answer will be ‘the lack of proper education about animal welfare in our society (and speciesism perhaps?)’ but we all know that this doesn’t help us understand nor solve the problem, does it? So here comes the more complex answers.
As starters, the government and current legislations. Speaking of the government, politics may first come to mind for many, and Taiwan is no exception. That means, that most in charge of making the legislations and policies guiding the industries are politicians, instead of welfare scientists, wildlife professionals, vets or experts in animal husbandry. I don’t want to go too deep into the discussion about politics but, basically, the Department of Animal Welfare, which is the government section that is responsible for the management of the animal exhibition industry, doesn’t have enough knowledgable staffs to filter personal opinions from scientific information. In my opinion, some of them don’t even have the industry’s nor the animals’ in these organisations best interests in mind which is kind of understandable since these people are politicians, they rely heavily on people’s votes; thus, need the public to like them (understandable but not exactly acceptable). However, this composition of the government responsible for the industry can lead to many more complicated issues.
Now that we’ve gone through the problem with the people making the law. Let’s take a look at what they’ve created. Despite operating in the name of ‘animal welfare’, the current animal exhibition regulation mostly regulates the lands, buildings and structures the businesses use, and the rest is a bunch of requirements in paperwork submissions, such as operation plans, numbers and types of animals kept and etc.. It basically has almost no welfare aspect in it, and even with the parts that are related to animal management, there isn’t a clear purpose of why such paperwork is needed and how this information can aid the management of the industry in the aim of improving their animals’ welfare.
Taking a deeper look into this animal exhibition regulation, the definition of what counts as an act of animal exhibition is actually a bit unclear. Since the regulation defines the exhibition of animal as ‘any form of animal (vertebrates, to be precise) display, performance or human-animal interaction in public’, any animal that is owned by a person and can be regularly seen by the public matches this narrative. For example, if someone has his or her pet alpaca ‘free-ranging’ in the restaurant he or she owns, does this person needs a license for this? Some may think the answer should be yes but in reality he or she can claim that the alpaca is a pet which brings us to a loop hole in the current legislation: the potential overlap with other legislations for perhaps companion, farm or lab animals. However, the authority may reject this claim and insist that this is an act of animal exhibition since no one can really phase out the effect of the alpaca on the customer’s choice to dine in this restaurant. This sort of situation mostly falls down to the decision of local authorities. If they don’t want more work, then the alpaca is a pet.
Furthermore, as the animal exhibition regulation covers a wide variety of animals, the businesses in this industry can go from zoological parks and aquariums to animal cafes. This makes it even more challenging to establish suitable standards for operations in different sizes, with different numbers and kinds of animal species. How would one categorise which operation may pose greater welfare issues to the animals it kept and therefore deserves more attention and supervision?
The last bit of comment on the government and legislations is that none of them can nor dare to come with enough force to shut down illegal operations or those that keep on falling behind the welfare standards. There has so far been no shelters nor staffs qualified to take in retired exhibitied animals. While there are some wildlife rescue centres in the country that are taking care of wildlife/exotic animals which can’t be released, they don’t have the spare resource to take in more of them. Basically, Taiwan doesn’t have the capacity to afford the businesses keeping animals with untolerable welfare status to close.
The second part that I would like to talk about is the issues in the industry itself. I think that most people understand that laws are the society’s baseline of morality so that the government shouldn’t be taking all the blame for the industry’s failures. The industry itself has the responsibility to become better, no matter it’s for the welfare of their animals or the growth of their own businesses. Sadly, the welfare standards in the animal exhibition industry in this country are generally low, and I believe that the main causes for this include the lack of well educated staffs and the overpowering mindset of ‘make more money, nothing else matters’. The worst part is, from what I’ve observed, this may also be a global phenomenon in zoo or related industries.
Hiring quality staffs seems to be an ongoing challenge for the entire industry. In general, this country lacks the resources in grooming professionals specialising in zoo animal management and care, and the difficulty in providing resources in abundance is most likely due to the great variety of animal species that may be kept in these organisations. Even if there are a few educated and experienced people on the market, the overall salaries and benefits in the industry are poor. Most who first entered the related fields of study and industry are the people who love animals and have the passion for the job. Yet, in the long term, this passion of many are eventually burnt out due to the poor salaries and work conditions, the lack of the sense of self achievement and recognition, and having to deal with heart-wrenching situations at work every now and then. From time to time, staffs come and go. Some switch positions one after the other while others leave the industry, and the businesses then have to again spend time and effort to train newbies which some of them don’t even have any background in exotic animal husbandry. To make things worst, many of the businesses in the animal exhibition industry don’t have proper training documents nor SOPs to ensure the work quality from their staff. It’s a vicious cycle and no one wins, not the employers, not the employees, and definitely not the animals.
As for the mindset of making more money, it seems quite reasonable since the purpose of a business is to make money after all. Also, to be fair, taking good care of animals requires money and usually it’s the more the better. At the end of the day, if the public all decide not to visit certain zoos, farms, animal cafes etc. with low welfare standards, it should be enough to phase out businesses that keep on failing to reach the bar, and this should be able to create a drive for the industry to aim higher for their own operations to continue. Therefore, this serves as a transition for the issues of the final group that I would like to share about, and that is: the public, our invisible supervising force.
With more specific and focused aims, animal protection groups are usually one of the strongest force overseeing both the government and the industry directly on welfare matters. However, most of these groups are facing the exact same challenges that the animal exhibition industry is having with staff hiring. Many people working in animal protection groups or participating their events haven’t received any proper training in animal husbandry, zoo management, animal welfare science, and etc., and this reflects strongly on a lot of their comments and proposals which are mostly driven by their emotions and personal values. Plus, animal protection groups are, unfortunately, some of the best people that know how to manipulate public opinions and how to market themselves to get more people in supporting them. I’m not opposing to the expression of different opinions but, when it comes to solving problems happening in reality, this idealistic approach often ends up with plans that are unable to execute or fail to hit the targets.
Last but not least, the public. The neglecting attitude of the society regarding exhibited animal welfare has finally been reflected by our public. Most people in Taiwan either don’t know a thing about animal welfare science(many will claim they know but they actually don’t), such as that they can’t even identify the differences between animal welfare science and animal rights, or just don’t care enough to try to understand it at all. In general, I don’t believe that our public is fit enough to make well informed and educated choices on which zoos they visit or what groups they want to support. Eventually, they keep on visiting any business as long as there are animals in it and have been indirectly supporting the places keeping animals with poor welfare standards.
Why Care and How to Make Things Better?
So, why should people care about the welfare of exhibited animals? Well, I think that everyone should be more responsible for their own actions and choices since one would be supporting the business that he or she is visiting, and most of the animals at these places are there mainly to entertain us and to make us feel more relaxed. I’m personally not against keeping animals in captivity but I believe that people should be a lot more responsible for how they’re doing it, which is to look after the animals’ welfare. It’s not only our moral duty but also, literary, legal obligation as a civilsed society to ensure that the animals under our care enjoy a decent quality of life. While some may think that the industry is just like any other ones, my opinions are otherwise. Animal exhibition is some of the few industries that involves the lives of others and animals can’t give consent so, if we forget about speciesism for a bit, we should give this industry the same level of caution as all those other industries that involve human lives.
Although there have been some improvements with the industry, there are still, in my opinion, too may misconducts after Ah-he the hippo incident that could have been prevented or handled more properly with more respect if the issues mentioned above were not that severe. One recent example is the baboon incident. In short, the animal escaped from one of the biggest business in the industry, and was wandering around for days until finally being caught. However, the animal was already dying at that moment since he or she was shot instead of being anesthetised as it should be. After the animal faced his or her inevitable death, all the parties involved in the capture mission just kept on shifting blames. For me, this shows a lot of disregard for other’s life and wellbeing and how people in this industry lack the profession they should have.
To wrap up the piece, I would like to offer my humble suggestions on some potential attempts to reverse the current situation in the animal exhibition industry in Taiwan. Putting resource limitations aside(although I know the greatest obstacle often comes from lack of money and resource supporting the plans, I don’t really think that’s entirely the case for our situation), since the root of all these issues is the lack of proper education system for both the public and people related to the industry, as mentioned perviously, I believe this can be a good place to start with. For the public, as some animal protection materials on companion cats and dogs have been implemented into part of our compulsory education system, I don’t think it’s too much to ask that to bring the basics of animal welfare in a broader context into it as well. On the other hand, regarding professional training, an education programme including all aspects of exotic/wildlife keeping, such as husbandry, animal welfare, veterinary care, animal transportation, animal training, zoo management, legislation, enclosure design, nutrition, population management etc., and internship opportunity to get first-hand experience with animal care would be quite ideal. There can perhaps be certifications for those who have successfully complete the entire professional training process not only to set a higher standard for the animal keeping profession but also to make the experience more rewarding for the participants (happy staffs, happy animals, I believe). Furthermore, I believe that the completion of the programme should also be a requirement for people working in the government section that is responsible to oversee the industry. The effectiveness of the programme should be tracked and evaluated regularly with relevant changes being made if necessary. To speed up the change, I think it will be valuable to occasionally take a look at the experiences of other countries since several of them are way ahead of us in tackling the same issues and they may have already been through similar scenarios. One example is to have people with relevant scientific backgrounds forming a specialist group to act as a consulting role for the responsible government department and policy makers to prevent the voices of certain interest groups from being overpowering.
Lastly, this may be due to my current position that I’m saying this but the employers in this industry should value people with relevant degrees or experiences more since there are currently not that many of them around, and, with the work condition already unwelcoming, I don’t think the industry can afford to lose them in the long term. Unfortunately, as long as the issues discussed above haven’t been improved, the more it will keep on costing the animal exhibition industry in Taiwan.
PS. A perhaps kind of crazy idea have came to me after finishing the original draft, and that is, the establishment of a shelter/training centre combining the function of taking in retired exhibited animals and providing professional training may be a decent long term plan to solve the issues in this industry. With the establishment of an operation of this kind, the government will have the potential to act as a stronger force in phasing out the businesses that don’t live up to proper standards, and the training centre will have suitable resources to provide proper professional trainings.
