Member
Joseph wins a free dinner ticket organised by Hawaii Bob.
Judith had heard Heathrow was closed by a blizzard …
Master of Ceremonies Richard Silverberg welcomed everyone
to the Sunday, December 19th meeting of the Pattaya City Expats Club. He
called on Francis Catalang, a student from the Regents School, to introduce
guest speaker Louis Ng from Singapore. Louis is the founder and Executive
Director of Animal Concerns Research and Education Society (ACRES). Louis
received his Bachelor of Science in Biology from National University of
Singapore and in 2004 he received his Masters in Primate Conservation from
Oxford Brookes University, UK.
Pattaya
City Expats were fortunate to have Singaporean Louis Ng, founder and
Executive Director of Animal Concerns Research and Education Society (ACRES)
talk to us about animal rights, and preventing abuse of animals.
Louis started by displaying some pictures when he opened
his remarks with “Do animals have rights?” One picture depicted a rabbit
used in experimentations and the other was a video clip showing a bear from
the Singapore Zoo continuously running in circles.
He mentioned that the work of Acres was in the areas of
improving captive animal welfare, undercover investigations into illegal
wildlife trade, wildlife rescue work and raising public awareness on animal
welfare. He said that people should understand that animals are smart and
can suffer. He cited several examples including chimps that can actually
communicate through sign language and mentioned other animals that are known
to have some ability to communicate.
He said he first got interested in animal welfare when he
was a young boy when he saw the movie Gorillas in the Mist; the story of
Dian Fossey, a scientist who went to Africa to study the vanishing mountain
gorillas and fought to protect them.
With the aid of pictures and video, Louis described the
need for concern over the welfare of animals, which can be the conditions at
zoos where animals are kept, animal shows where they are used for
entertainment, or their use in experimentation for beauty and other
products.
Louis
with teacher Paul Crouch and students of the Round Square project, Regents
School, Pattaya, who organised Louis’s trip to Thailand.
Also, animals such as bears and tigers are inhumanely
treated and harvested for their body parts in making traditional Chinese
medicines. He said that the bad treatment of animals is not necessarily the
result of intentional cruelty, but happens mostly through ignorance.
Although his group has taken positive action, it takes more than that. He
said it takes community awareness of the plight of these animals to change
the public’s acceptance of what happens to them.
He said he would primarily focus on a few of these areas.
The first was bear farms where horrific and inhumane methods of bile
extraction have been developed by the bear farming industry. All of them
cause severe mental and physical trauma to the captive bears. Louis showed
pictures of how the bears are kept in small cages for years so that their
bile can be collected and used in making traditional Chinese medicines. He
said that many of the bears go mad and can be seen repeatedly beating their
heads against their cage bars.
He then pointed out the plight of animals being used for
entertainment. These, too, are often kept in small cages between
performances that are not suited for them, and the trade in exotic animals
that is illegal, but still being done.
He mentioned several actions ACRES has taken in Singapore
to reduce the number of shops selling traditional Chinese medicine that use
bear and tiger parts. The ACRES Wildlife Rescue Team has also rescued more
than 740 wild animals in Singapore since August 2009. They have also
conducted surveys of zoos in Malaysia and Thailand. This effort includes
forming a partnership with various authorities to work together to eradicate
poor animal welfare conditions in these zoos.
Louis concluded by mentioning the ACRES Wildlife Rescue
Centre. He showed pictures of the Centre noting the types of animals they
care for and how they are treated. Louis said that as far as possible,
animals rescued from the illegal wildlife trade are being repatriated to
their country of origin, whilst native animals are rehabilitated and
released back to the wild. They also have an Education Centre that offers
several programs for visitors to gain a better understanding of the plight
of animals and how they can help.
Louis answered many questions about ACRES and his work.
For those that are interested in more information on their work, they can
visit the ACRES website at http://www.acres.org.sg/
Richard Silverberg then updated everyone on upcoming
events and called on Judith Edmonds to conduct the always informative and
sometimes humorous Open Forum, where questions about living in Thailand and
Pattaya in particular are asked and answered.
