A new bill making it illegal to buy, sell, or possess steel-jaw traps (a common torture device used to trap animals for their fur) has passed in Taiwan. Pamela Anderson and PETA Asia-Pacific sent a bouquet of flowers to legislator Ting Shou-chung, who proposed the motion and was instrumental in pushing it through.
 

Animals caught in steel-jaw traps struggle in excruciating pain to get free as the jaws cut into their flesh, often down to the bone. Some animals, especially mothers desperate to return to their babies, will attempt to chew or twist off their trapped limbs. Animals may struggle for hours and even days before they finally succumb to blood loss, exposure, frostbite, or dehydration. All this before they are killed, usually for their fur.

Shockingly, these cruel devices are still legal and in use in the United States. Take a stand against them by signing PETA’s fur-free pledge today.

 
Written by Michelle Sherrow

When are Canadian sealers going to catch a break? Never, it seems, as long as they continue to hook baby seals in the eye or mouth, drag them across the ice, and bludgeon them to death.

Taiwan's forestry bureau is considering banning seal products, just as the U.S. and the European Union have done. Forestry officials say that the country's consumers have stopped buying seal products in the wake of a news conference last year that showed how seals are killed. Are you listening, Canada? People aren't cool with baby-seal beatings. Taiwanese officials say that Canada is concerned about the impact that the potential ban might have on the rest of Asia.

Yep, they should worry, all right. Chinese citizens said in January that they don't want the seal meat that Canada is trying to sell them either. Come on, Canada. Everyone else on the planet can't be wrong.

jomilo75/cc by 2.0

Written by Michelle Sherrow

Potty-training factory-farmed animals in an effort to curb pollution? That's what Taiwan's Environmental Protection Administration is proposing. Last week, the government agency said that it wants to train free-range pigs to urinate and defecate in certain areas in order to prevent them from relieving themselves in (and thereby polluting) rivers and streams.

The problem is, the tremendous amount of waste produced by the 6 million pigs raised and killed annually in Taiwan still must be disposed of somehow. And this measure doesn't even begin to address pigs' carbon emissions. According to the United Nations, raising animals for food is a leading contributor to climate change. 
 

Joost J Bakker IJmuiden/cc by 2.0

Maybe the Taiwanese government should take the lead globally and say, "Enough is enough." The best way to curb waste and pollution and slow climate change is to say bye-bye to factory farms. 

Written by Joseph Mayton

abc / CC

It's a good day for mice and rats in the Republic of China (aka Taiwan)! Thanks to a whistleblower, PETA's Laboratory Investigations Department got a tip that led us into high-level talks with National Yang-Ming University's president about her school's cruel pharmacology experiments. And what do you know—the university has decided to end not one but two of these outdated tests in less than nine days and instead use humane non-animal alternatives!

Part of the first experiment called for students to pump the chemical strychnine into the stomachs of approximately 150 mice through surgically-attached stomach tubes. That's right, strychnine—and then the students were required to observe and record the animals' convulsions. The second experiment required the students to inject pentylenetetrazol, a convulsion-causing chemical, into approximately 135 mice. The students then had to inject acetic acid into the animals, which caused their bodies to contort painfully.

Now, both experiments have been canceled—and nearly 300 mice will be spared these terrible procedures every semester. The university will still conduct experiments on animals—including one cruel blood-pressure manipulation experiment in which students slice open animals' windpipes and blood vessels—but the university has also agreed to dramatically reduce the number of rats who are used in that experiment—to just one.

These victories come after PETA successfully convinced National Taiwan University College of Medicine to end similar experiments on animals earlier this year.

This is a great start for National Yang-Ming University and National Taiwan University College of Medicine, where school officials are beginning to realize that animal experimentation is not just unnecessary—it's inaccurate and completely inhumane.

Written by Amanda Schinke

Severely injured dog in Sanchong shelter

Remember the Sanchong animal shelter outside Taipei, where PETA Asia-Pacific found suffering dogs kept in horrific conditions? Well, thanks to all your calls and e-mails, the city's mayor is going to meet with PETA Asia-Pacific. He wants to discuss reforms like fixing the shelter's floor and developing SOPs for caring for the sick and injured animals. But we want more—much, much more—and we need your help!

Conditions at the shelter are so bad that redoing the concrete floor and putting up a tarp to help keep out torrential rain isn't going to do it. So long as the same lazy louts are still in charge—people who stand around joking while dogs convulse at their feet—we'd like the place to be closed down and the money to be used to move strays straight from the street into veterinary care. Please tell Sanchong to use the shelter for something else, to reassign the callous workers, and to send dogs straight to the vet for treatment or euthanasia if they are pain.

PETA Asia-Pacific's Coco and local volunteers held a great demo (see below).

For one reason or another, Taiwan is proving to be something of a golden child these days when it comes to passing progressive legislation that benefits animals. If things continue this way, the Dutch are going to need to start watching their backs or they'll lose their current status as "most animal-friendly country" before you can say "Dude, where the hell did you get these 'animal-friendly-country' statistics from anyway?" Under Taiwan's latest piece of legislation, the Wildlife Conservation Law, all animal circuses will be banned, exports of exotic animals as pets will be prohibited, and the punishment for "harassing, hurting, or abandoning animals" will include a maximum one-year prison term. Way to go, Taiwan!

Just a quick bit of good news for you to start off your Tuesday: According to last week’s Taipei Times, a new amendment to Taiwan’s Wildlife Conservation Law means that animal circuses are on the way out in Taiwan. When interviewed about the progressive new law, legislator Tien Chiu-Chin said, "Circuses do not need animals to be fun and successful. … Most important, by exposing our children to wild animals through circus acts, we are setting an incorrect example of how humans should interact with animals." 'Nuff said, Tien Chiu-Chin. Here's hoping the U.S. wakes up and follows Taiwan's example. You can read the full story here.