Illegal wildlife trade in the open

While traversing the streets of hawker food, wholesale boutique and all the urban hubbub associated with a city hard at work, I have been too befuddled at how retail businesses have taken to making a living out of live animals.

Not pet shops, not live poultry, but the glaring hotspots of live animals on display, touted to treat ailments of all kinds, as well as the audacious display of aquatic life, made to seem as if they serve as ornate furnishings to the beauty of a home.

In the immediate picture below, you see two people standing in front of a 'reptile shop' that sells and serves reptile meat (eg. cobra and iguana), attracting foreign visitors who fall prey to the fabricated reputation that it is a cultural delicacy, and locals who are appealed by the constructed myth of its medicinal value.

The increasing animal movement in the past decades has certainly improved consumers' awareness of its falsity, in the lack of scientific proof that these meats can be medicines, if at all, as well as drawn others to challenge even the very existence of these businesses.

For fear of being unnecessarily intimidated, I did not openly take pictures of this shop but (sharing with you from my first-hand experience) I witnessed tankfuls of iguanas and a cage of cobra on public display at the shopfront. Ironically, this shop (together with other reptile hotspots) exist beside established boutique brands and in fact, right on the ground floor of residential buildings. (Un)ethicality amidst human crowds.



Here, we have a tank of terrapins on audacious display at another shop of a different district which is known as the aquatic hotspot among the locals. To be fair, I still cannot be sure if these shops deal with illegal wildlife trades, but after I was told off to not take pictures of the shops by a shopkeeper, I grew more positive about the 'underground' scale on which retails like these most likely operate. Chances are, the shops handle endangered species.



Sights to behold, sights to provoke vocal activists to screaming actions, sights to prompt the local animal welfare authorities to relook into the ethicality of these businesses.

On hindsight, a fellow animal welfare representative comes to mind, his statement that 'Singapore... is still in the dark ages [when it comes to animal welfare]'. Like all endeavours, there will always be room for improvement -- not only in the microcosm of Singapore, but in other places where influences of animal movements have not reached. Where the humane treatment of animals, the beauty of nature, do not seep into the collective consciousness of societies.

Fellow supporters, whichever location you are, you carry with you a sense of animal conscience that rubs off on those around you. You speech, your behaviour... your refusal to purchase ivory tasks, to consume shark's fins, to dabble in dog racing, to participate in cock fighting, will leave little signposts of your natural support for animal welfare, a trail of strong messages to educate and share.

Your right as a consumer is powerful. Your feedback as a visitor, a third-person, a keen observer, counts.