Although the Animal Protection Law has been seen as a symbol of Taiwan's progress towards a more "civilized" society, it does not give equal protection to all animals "sacrificed" for human benefit.

A few years ago there was a protest by New Zealand animal welfare activists against the eating of live fish in Japanese seafood restaurants. Some found this protest puzzling-after all, guests in Western restaurants guzzle down large numbers of live oysters, yet they had never heard of anyone protesting against that. Was this another case of "cultural prejudice"?

We can know a fish's suffering

In fact, most countries' animal protection laws, including Taiwan's brand-new Animal Protection Law, only protect vertebrate animals. Thus although seafoods form an economically important part of the human diet, apart from fish most seafood species slip through the net of animal protection laws.

There is a "scientific" basis for this. Associate Professor Yeh Li-sen of National Taiwan University's Department of Veterinary Medicine says that research has shown that most vertebrates have similar cerebral nervous systems, nerve pathways from the peripheral areas of the body to the cerebrum and chemical signaling substances to those of humans, so that just like humans they can experience fear and pain. But the bodies of invertebrates such as insects and mollusks lack the same "equipment" for the sensation of pain.

When animal protection has to be implemented in specific legal regulations the assistance of scientific research is usually required, so that concepts such as cruelty and pain are no longer vague or left to the kind of subjective judgements to which Zhuangzi retorted "I am not a fish-how can I know a fish's suffering?" Science also allows appropriate protective rules to be drafted according to the specific needs of different animals.

For instance, US standards for the management of laboratory animals require research establishments to provide toys for chimpanzees and monkeys, because these animals, which like humans are primates, have a strong need for play.

John Yu, a research fellow at Academia Sinica's Institute of Zoology, recalls how students brought a criminal prosecution for cruelty to animals against an American university professor he knew for experimenting on hens' eggs. Later the professor established that nine-day-old chick embryos do not have a fully developed nervous system, and have no sensation of pain. Hence he was acquitted.

Animal welfare cannot be based on empty talk. As well as the need to apply to animals a spirit of consideration for others and the concept of "do as you would be done by," it also requires research into animals' ecology and biology.

Can life be scientifically analyzed?

Through science people can more correctly satisfy animals' biological needs, but scientific research has its limits, and by extrapolating a human model of pain sensation one may overlook other animals' biological characteristics. It was recently discovered that octopuses, which are mollusks, have a nervous system more similar to that of humans than do many other vertebrates. This suggests that invertebrates also have the sensory ability to feel pain.

Since caring about animals involves individual human feelings, the idea of applying "scientific analysis" to animals to determine whether they should be protected seems absurd to some people. The great Song-dynasty scholar Su Dongpo "saved rice from his meals out of love for the mice, and did not light his lamps out of pity for the moths." And does it not show bias to forbid restaurants to kill fish in public because they are vertebrates, yet to allow live prawns to be thrown into boiling soup at the table because they are invertebrates?

Yang Tien-shu, a scientific expert on animal husbandry, feels that if society believes eating live prawns is an issue, it can ask scientists to research whether prawns feel pain. Aren't biologists in the West researching what discomfort may be caused to lobsters by refrigerated transport?

Chinese societies have a more transcendent Buddhist tradition which attaches equal value to all living things. In the absence of specific policies on animal protection, Chinese have long responded to the regrettable need to kill other living beings in order to satisfy their own hunger by reciting sutras and praying for the animals' souls to be released from purgatory. But Yeh Li-sen says this appears to be nothing more than a case of humans looking for excuses for their own actions, and a way out from their own guilt, without doing anything to genuinely improve animals' lot. "With this behavioral outlet, people don't consider the more important question of improvement." Yeh says that the stray dogs "set free" onto Taiwan's streets are symptomatic of people's ingrained reluctance to face up to the real suffering of living things.

One of life's quandaries

When implementing animal protection in the real world, however, there are many areas where a satisfactory solution is hard to find. "It really is very difficult to extend the law's protection to all animals in a scientific way," says Legislative Yuan member Shen Fu-hsiung, who comments that to ensure that a law can be both passed and enforced, one has to legislate with a realistic attitude. Otherwise, one could debate forever about whether cockroaches and mosquitoes, or even plants, which are living things too, should be protected. "Legislation always has its limits, and if one passes laws which are unenforceable it will only damage the government's credibility," he says.

Humans live within a natural food chain, and it is not possible for us to live in isolation from other living things. Nor can we advance to a stage where we could "liberate" all other animals. Therefore we can only do our best to show other living things respect under the most natural circumstances. Is this another of the basic quandaries of life?

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Because the APL does not cover invertebrate animals, there is no control over the way jellyfish, the latest fashionable pets, are caught or treated. (photo by Vincent Chang)