TNAG-0468-FCO40-533-Legislation-for-protection-of-wild-life-in-Hong-Kong-1974 — Page 125

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PENN

FX

Four of us conducted a small survey of conditions in the 3 or 4 main shops dealing exclusively in animals from China. We made 18 visits in January and February of 1973. Recordings were bad because the machine had to be hidden, and because of the awful noise. This is the biggest one- Shing Lee Hong - in the very crowded Mongkok area of Kowloon. It opens into the street in the usual Chinese way and baskets of birds are stacked on the pavements at busy times. Half the shop is for snakes stored in lockers lining the walls and usually there's a couple of men busily opening the snakes up and removing their bladders. Most winter afternoons the floor is stacked with crates, cages, and baskets of terrified creatures just delivered. Many of the larger ones can't stand or stretch out in their containers and haven't been able to for the whole journey. Many arrive from China badly injured from trapping in small crates allowing no access to water or food. And remember - listening to this, that the British Government has banned animal exports to Western Europe because of cruelty.

Shop noise - loud.

Lance

little more careful

These boxes are unloaded from a lorry, hurled around onto the floor. Two men then - one with a hammer and a crowbar, smash and bash as loud as they can and see what comes out. If it's a pangolin they can just pick it up and throw it to the next man who'll put it in a cage. If it's a civet cat, they have to be a they might get bitten. Therefore, they'll carefully manoeuvre another cage close to the broken box and either hammer like mad on the box to drive the civet cat out of the crate into the cage or will poke iron bars right through the box, prod the animal with an iron bar until it comes out of the box into the cage.

The noise

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was absolutely deafening. Awful! The animals are terrified they don't know where to run.

Hechtel

Many of these animals are nocturnal and many of them are

M

burrowing they like to feel secure and hidden away. And of course this is being in an open cage where people can see them all round and they've got nowhere they can get away is really atrocious cruelty. Quite apart from the actual physical cruelty of being dropped from two or three feet, and of course stood on end so that the animal can't lie down it's in a long cage and it literally has to stand up or squat on its haunches. These cages are thrown across the room. If the animal has broken legs or anything broken it really doesn't matter, as long as it lives long enough to be sold.

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