About Animals

This discussion was about the various issues regarding animals : such as animal rights, animals as pets, and animals as food

Presented by Linh and Ha

The group that came to this discussion was quite small, however, despite of this, the discussion carried out was more personal, and involved greater inputs from participants.

Linh talked about animals as food, and whether it was ethical to eat certain animals as food, particularly in Vietnam, this would be food such as dog meat, cat meat, and various other controversial animals. As she had pets at home, she found that this was very cruel. Adding to this point, she also mentioned that people do not see food as animals, but rather, food as food, which is why they would eat meat, the psychological effort of seeing animals being killed for food is quite influencial.

An interesting quote was made by Thuy, in that in Vietnam, the financial situation isn't that stable, hence, it is very important to be able to survive. Survival comes first and people would find all sort of means to earn money, food being a good avenue, hence the sale of all kinds of meat besides the convential chicke, beef and pork. This includes dog-meat, embryo eggs and little sparrows, these 3 of which are the most popular non-convential food in Vietnam. However, it is still split in opinion with regards to the rights of these animals. Thus the current situation in Vietnam, with both modern thinking and the notion of survival.

This was followed up by a point made by Shi Lei, on the issue of cosmetic testing on animals, and whether it was ethical, again , this brought a very good discussion in to topic, again split into different viewpoints. Most notably animals lovers and non animal lovers. The issue of survival comes into effort once again. If these testings are not done on animals, who else can they be done on. Is the value of life in an animal of equal importance to that of a human being. This session left me pondering alot, a rather deep but well analysed reading.

Daniel Foo