2020年11月21日

Animal Welfare

後半はアニマルライツについて。メンバーの中には動物好きが多いので、熱いディスカッションになること間違いなしです。
動物園の動物たちを見物する時いつも若干の違和感を抱きながら彼らを見ていますが・・・その違和感を思いっきりついてくる質問になっていますね。

TOPIC 1 Animal Kingdom!
1. What is the best animal spices you like, other than dogs and cats? Why?
(I did not include dogs and cats, because I know some of us love them so much!)

2. Do you have any impressive memories, funny episodes, or scary moments associating with animals?

3. Do you go to the zoos or the aquariums often? What is the best place you recommend?

TOPIC 2 Animal Welfare
Historically, human beings have been living with many companion animals, and our life cannot be sustained without them. Today, we may even share the happiness and the sadness with them. They make us smiley when they are loved and being happy, and we feel pretty disturbed when we see them suffering.

The Five Freedoms standards were developed by Britain's Farm Animal Welfare Council in 1965 and are internationally accepted. It assures that the every companion animal should receive humane treatment. These standards are
1. Freedom from hunger and thirst
2. Freedom from discomfort
3. Freedom from pain, injury, or disease
4. Freedom to express normal behavior
5. Freedom from fear and distress
https://www.animalhumanesociety.org/health/five-freedoms-animals

1. Animal Welfare
Do you think these standards are correctly implemented for companion animals in Japan and elsewhere in the world? How about zoos, aquariums, pet stores, breeders, labs, or farms?

2. Kyoto Aquarium
It has opened since 2012. When the sector proposed their concept and idea of the facility, there was a big argument about the dolphin show. Many citizens opposed the idea of having the dolphin show in it, because “it is educationally wrong”. In fact, the aquarium is focused on displaying mainly the native species of Kyoto, and a place would be for environmental education. However, the dolphin show has nothing to do with the concept, nor it would induce the inhumane captivity and treatments of dolphins from the nature. On the other hand, if they hadn't be able to host the dolphin show, the sector probably wouldn't have agreed to build the aquariums, which, to say, some dolphins lives were sacrificed for the sake of money.

Alternatively, the Vancouver Park Board voted to ban bringing in all new cetaceans (whales and dolphins), even if they are injured or rescued, and the Vancouver Aquarium agrees to that idea.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/vancouver-aquarium-drops-cetacean-ban-lawsuit-against-vancouver-park-board-1.5189507

What is your opinion about having cetaceans in aquariums in Japan?
What do you think of the movements of banning cetaceans from the aquariums?
Why Kyoto Aquarium couldn’t do just like Vancouver Aquarium did, even though their basic concept of “showing the indigenous species” are the same?

3. Where Should We Go?
If you start thinking about the animal welfare and animal rights, there are full of conflicts and it will come to our way of living at the end which leads way too far. Where is the “line” we should draw on?