Animal protection groups yesterday urged the public to boycott shows featuring whales and dolphins, and called for increased public awareness about the number of cetaceans being captured, traded or slaughtered worldwide.
Environmental and Animal Society of Taiwan director Chen Yu-min (陳玉敏) told a news conference in Taipei that cetacean poaching is the most rampant in the waters off the town of Taiji in Wakayama Prefecture, Japan, where as many as 400,000 small cetaceans were captured or slaughtered over the past 20 years.
Chen said Japan is the world’s largest exporter of cetaceans and that by purchasing these animals, Taiwanese recreational facilities have become accomplices in a “cruel” industry.
Photo: Hsieh Wen-hua, Taipei Times
Citing the Farglory Ocean Park in Hualien County as an example, she said the park purchased 17 cetaceans from Japanese dealers between 2002 and 2005, and ordered 13 more in 2010.
Even though the Forestry Bureau stepped in to block the sales, citing high mortality rates and poor living conditions at the facility, the incident revealed the challenges that other cetaceans face at local recreational parks, including 21 California sea lions, 18 common bottlenose dolphins, four South American fur seals, four white whales, one Risso’s dolphin and one African manatee, the activists said.
“As long as people continue to attend these shows, the cruelty against cetaceans will never cease,” she said.
Citing a special act in the UK governing the living space of cetaceans at zoos, which stipulates that at least 1,000m3 be allotted per five cetaceans kept by zoos and that another 200m3 be allocated with each additional cetacean, she said that three of the 11 dolphins at Yehliu Ocean World in New Taipei City share a space of just 288m3, with the others being confined to two tiny pools each measuring 236m3.
“These appalling living environments have a very detrimental effect on the dolphins, such as impairing their ability to tell directions and feed crop milk,” she said.
Environment and Animal Society of Taiwan chief executive Chu Tseng-hung (朱增宏) said that the nation lacks a law dedicated to the care and maintenance of marine animals.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the