Live animals came as key chains to China. These lizards, fish, turtles and salamanders are enclosed in plastic bags and sold for $1.25 as souvenirs.
This morbid trend gives a new facet to the term " pet "...
1) Key ring animals... Alive
Live animals in key rings: a well-established trade in China
In China, street vendors have for years been selling live animal keychains : small plastic bubbles containing trapped turtles, goldfish, salamanders and frogs.
These popular baubles in China , supposed to bring happiness to their owner, are in reality real funeral prisons for the animals locked inside.
The small animals are suspended in brightly colored liquid , often accompanied by beads and other decorations, and are barely able to move.
The water is supposed to contain oxygen and nutrients that can keep them alive for a few days.
A cruel practice that has no regard for animal welfare
The CNN news channel first revealed in 2011 the case of these animals being treated as objects, rather than as living beings .
Of course, animal rights activists have denounced these keychains as incredibly cruel, because animals inevitably die when their oxygen runs out.
In the best case scenario, they are released from their prison and end up as pets with people who are not ready to care for them.
Watch this video from a Euronews report showing this cruel trade in action.
2) Keychains with Live Animals: China at the center of an international scandal
A locked animal condemned to painful agony
A seller of live animal keychains told CNN that the sachets contain "crystallized oxygen and nutrients." But animal rights activists oppose these claims, saying that lack of food and oxygen deprivation kill animals quickly (in just a few days or hours...).
And frankly, you don't have to be an expert to understand that an animal won't live long in a plastic bag.
The only way for the animal to survive is to get it out of the plastic, but most owners let the animals die and then throw them away.
Some compassionate people may free animals from their plastic tombs and keep them as pets . But these people could face serious health risks. Turtles, for example, are known to carry Salmonella, a dangerous bacteria.
Legal trade in China, which arouses general indignation
This strange trend terrifies and disgusts many people around the world, including animal rights activists and advocates.
Regardless of which view you take, the practice of forcibly turning living animals into keychains is simply cruel.
Unfortunately, in China, there are no animal welfare laws to prevent this outrageous treatment of living creatures. The sale of these key rings is therefore legal, and is not condemned by the public authorities.
Qin Xiaona , director of the Capital Animal Welfare Association, an NGO that works for animal welfare and rights, confirmed the helplessness of organizations like his. He said they were still legal because these creatures do not fall under the classification of wild animals . He added: " China only has one wild animal protection law. If the animals are not wild animals, they do not fall within the scope of the law. "
An international petition aimed at putting an end to this barbaric practice has already reached more than a million signatures.
3) Live Animal Keychains in China: Hoax or not?
February 2012 saw the publication of this article decrying the confinement of live turtles, fish and salamanders in plastic bags filled with colored super-oxygenated water and sold as souvenir key chains in China, urging readers to encourage the media to “take this news back” and help put an end to a form of animal cruelty.
Even if at first many believed it was hoax and false information, the truth is much more dramatic: these key rings do indeed exist.
