A teacher and several college music students, together with the Environment and Animal Society of Taiwan (EAST), yesterday called for an end to the “divine pig” weighing competitions that are still being practiced by at least 12 temples in the nation as a religious ritual.
The EAST has been calling for an end to the tradition of “abusing animals in the name of rituals and folk customs” for years, and this year, the cause is being supported by a group of young musicians who said they felt the pain of the pigs that are caged and force-fed for their whole lives before finally being “offered to the gods.”
Four students from Fu Jen Catholic University and National Taipei University of Arts played two pieces, Albinoni’s Adagio in G minor and Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings, over footage capturing the short life of a pig that is to be sacrificed at a religious ceremony.
Photo: Chien Jung-fong, Taipei Times
In the video, the pig was in a cage of about the animal’s size, it was force-fed, and when the pig refused food, it would be hit on the face.
The video described how pigs are fattened to the point where they can no longer stand and are tied for weighing before being slaughtered by having their throat slashed, without first being stunned.
“Even if they try to stun the pigs, it would not work because they are too fat to have the electricity effectively do what it is supposed to do,” EAST director Chen Yu-min (陳玉敏) said.
“Some who engage in the divine pig practice excuse their deeds by saying that the pigs ‘have a good life with good food, fans to cool them and massages.’ I want to ask them whether they would dare try living in the same way, even just for a year, with restricted movement and being force-fed,” she added.
Lin Hsiu-fen (林秀芬), an instructor in the music department at Fu Jen Catholic University and the initiator of yesterday’s event, said she suffers from renal failure and once suffered from edema “so excruciating that I wished my life could end right there.”
“It is hard to imagine how much more pain the pigs experience,” Lin said.
Chen said while many temples support their cause and have agreed to stop the divine pig practice, at least 12 are still hosting the offerings and competitions.
“The majority of temple-goers do not participate in the activity and pray with offerings that were slaughtered humanely and lawfully. The competition is for those who want to showcase their wealth and perpetrate face culture,” she said.
The group called on the public to voice their concern to the temples where the contests are still taking place to put an end to the practice, which it said has nothing to do with faith or worship.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater