Grace Chua Straits Times 26 Apr 13;
EARLIER this week, the Ministry of Education said compassion for animals is to become part of a national school syllabus for character education.
This is welcome. Any such syllabus must, however, go beyond looking at animals as pets, to inculcate a more holistic compassion for all animals.
A committee has reviewed animal-welfare-related legislation, including the Animals and Birds Act, the main piece of legislation governing the treatment of animals here.
Made up of MPs, animal welfare groups, vets, industry representatives and other stakeholders, it wants to shift mindsets of Singaporeans towards animals.
Too much of animal welfare law now addresses acts of cruelty only after they have been committed. The committee wants to see codes of welfare for animals to make pet owners responsible for complying with clearly-defined duties of care.
New Zealand and Britain have such codes of welfare. A code of welfare - such as enclosure size, a suitable diet, protection from the elements - serves as an anchoring guideline for how people should care for their pets and remind them that pets are not products or toys but living things.
The committee also recommends tightening penalties for those who do abuse animals. The maximum fine of $500 and jail term of six months were raised in 2002 to $10,000 and 12 months during the last revision of the Animals and Birds Act.
The review committee recommended a tiered structure that distinguishes between those who offend out of ignorance and those who do so out of malice.
The legislation reviewers also recommended improving the pet industry - by setting a minimum age (16) for children to buy pets, as Britain did in 2002. It also suggested screening pet buyers and licensing facilities, among others.
The committee's current focus is understandably on pets because most complaints of cruelty or neglect are about pets and pet owners.
As a society, Singapore may love its pets, but the country still has a long way to go when it comes to a broader, more humane appreciation of animals and their rightful place in the ecosystem.
Too many people regard monkeys or birds as pests, making it acceptable to complain about them to the authorities, who are often forced to put them down.
In 2010, there were 800 monkey-nuisance complaints; in 2012, 920. Overall, there were more than 9,500 cases of animal-related issues such as stray pets and alleged cruelty reported to the Agri-food and Veterinary Authority of Singapore (AVA) last year, up 20 per cent from the year before.
The AVA also loans out traps to residents; once they catch monkeys, the AVA retrieves the traps and puts the animals down.
Monkeys and other animals may become pests or even pose a danger to humans in some circumstances. But managed well, humans can learn to live peaceably with them without the need for culling.
Then there is the approach to community-owned cats and strays, which face the threat of being culled. In 2010, the AVA put down about 5,100 stray cats.
Today, only dogs need to be licensed with the AVA to keep tabs on rabies and other diseases. There are about 57,000 licensed dogs here.
Is there scope to give community cats some form of legal status rather than leaving them vulnerable to culling after residents' complaints or abuse?
Then there are the animals we eat or farm for eggs. Regulations here focus on protecting food safety and maintaining bio-security - that is, preventing the spread of animal disease. But Europe, for instance, has farm-animal welfare laws that set out how animals should be taken care of.
In the recent Our Singapore Conversation sessions, many participants have said that they want Singapore to be a more compassionate society.
What exactly does that mean?
It means protecting the most vulnerable members of society - the destitute, migrant workers and animals, which have no quarrel with people.
When it comes to animal welfare, Singapore is getting some of the big pieces in place: recognising the limits of its current laws and taking steps to update them, introducing mediation between neighbours to deal with animal nuisance complaints and recognising the need to teach its young compassion to animals.
But judging from the calls to cull animals which stray into our path, it has a long way to go to inculcate a genuine tolerance of and respect for the rights of animals to co-exist in our shared living environment.
