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On Dec.10th, 2022, International Animal Rights Day, we conducted street outreach activities on 3 spots, i.e. Shibuya (Tokyo), Iwate and Shiga, to appeal promotion of animal welfare and protection of animal rights. In Shibuya, a seminar on “animal welfare and rights” was also given. Dec.10th falls on “Human Rights Day.” Every person has the right to live one’s own life as a human being. In the same way, animals have the right to live their own lives. We believe the issue of animal rights is also the issue of animal welfare, just as the issue of human rights is also the issue of human being’s welfare. In the seminar, Ms.…
Koichi HOSOKAWA, Professor, Japan Women’s University More and more people consider pets to be family members. The term “companion animal” is also becoming more common. On the other hand, abuse and abandonment of pets and ill-treatment in the pet industry are often in the news. If you kill or injure someone else’s animal, you can be punished under criminal law for damaging property. However, this provision does not apply if the animal’s owner does the same. It is a crime to destroy someone else’s property, and animals are simply treated as property. The crime of damaging property is punishable by imprisonment of up to 1 year or a fine of…
An artist Ujiie-san, who is also a foster parent of chickens we rescued, donated a Buddhist art piece to the Animal Rights Center. Ideas of animal rights or animal welfare are often promoted by buddhist religious groups in some countries, like Taiwan or China. Although that’s not necessarily always the case here in Japan, a few temples share the passion of animal activism. Irrespective of religion, Japanese culture has originally appreciated ideas of mercy, compassion, dislike of killing, and respect for all beings. Many believe animal rights movements came from the Western society. However, the philosopher Peter Singer, who has theorized modern animal rights in academia, states that animal rights…
When visiting cattle housed in Tohoku following the disaster we witnessed cows laying down in abandoned cattle houses. When water was offered they guzzled it down. One cow, who had been unable to stand up, passed away a few days later. The calves, only 3 to 4 months old, in the neighboring cattle house were all dead. The baby cows were also dead in crates except for one calf who managed to escape. They died alone. The heifers were mostly dead. We only saw two survivors and when we approached them, they licked our hair. They may still be alive since their death is unconfirmed. The contents of the video…
Why “cultured meat” and “alternative meat” — animal sacrifice The graph below shows the estimated number of animals sacrificed around the world for meat, eggs, and dairy from 1961 to 2017. Source: FAOSTAT* Laying Eggs hen and Meat chicken use the left-most 1000Head axis, while Meat pig, Meat cattle, and Milk whole fresh cow use the inner axis. Here are the numbers of animals sacrificed in 2017. They amount to over 10 times the world population. Egg-laying hens 7.838 billion birds Broiler chickens 66.567 billion birds Pigs 1.486 billion heads Beef cattle 344.149 million heads Dairy cows …
The multi-partisan parliamentary group aiming for zero killing of dogs and cats has established a project team for amending the Animal Welfare Act. Since its launch on August 25, 2023, the PT has held 21 meetings to hear from stakeholders and deliberate on the direction of amendments. Out of these 21 sessions, however, only one touched on livestock animals, and just one on laboratory animals. Despite 1 billion livestock animals being killed annually, the issue remains far from the priorities of lawmakers. In the sole PT meeting addressing livestock, the discussions showed promise, but it is unlikely to expect significant amendments by 2025 at this rate. 17th PT: Hearings on…
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