Thirty legislators across party lines yesterday proposed an amendment to the Satellite Radio and Television Act (衛星廣播電視法) that would ban TV channels from airing programs that contain any footage of harassment or killing of animals.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) told a press conference yesterday that the proposal would seek to prohibit programs from showing any “harassment, abuse, hunting, killing, harming of animals or manipulation of animals against their nature.”
However, the restriction would not apply to “news reports that are meant to promote public welfare,” she said.
Proposing the amendment was necessary because regulations in Taiwan remained ambiguous, she said, adding that many TV programs in Taiwan were insensitive to animal welfare and tended to treat harassment of animals as a gimmick to boost viewership.
Showing video clips of a number of TV programs that include hosts or hostesses eating live octupus or deshelling live crabs, Cheng said these programs could be misleading to youngsters.
“Programs like this should be discouraged,” she said. “We should begin by respecting all life forms on earth.”
Citing a survey by the Fubon Cultural and Educational Foundation in 2003, Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Tien Chiu-chin (田秋堇) said 24.4 percent of children in Taiwan watched TV every night.
Up to 30.8 percent of them watched TV for an average of two to three hours every day while 22.3 percent of them watched TV for three-and-a-half hours, Tien said.
“Lots of research and news reports show that animal abuse is highly related to violent behavior. Particularly, those who abuse animals in their childhood or teens tend to resort to violence against others when they grow up,” she said.
TV programs should be informative and teach children and teenagers to have empathy toward animals, Tien said.
“Through this bill, I hope to send a message through this bill to people in Taiwan and abroad that we don't approve of programs like this,” she said.
Tien said channels like the Discovery Channel and the National Geographic Channel would have to blur footage containing the killing of animals even if the programs are for educational purposes or are documentaries.
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