ornamental fish exhibited in a store in Santaizi Ornamental Fish Trading Center in Anshan City. Photo/Xinhua News Agency
Recently, a citizen broke the news that there are several special claw machines in a shopping mall in Tianhe District, Guangzhou. The claw machine is not a mutton toy, but a live fish and a turtle. In response, the equipment maintenance staff said that there will be several fish that are killed by stirring or falling every day, but they will be cleaned and thrown away in time, and the water in the machine will be replaced every week. There is no problem with hygiene and is a normal business behavior.
putting live animals into the claw machine has indeed attracted some parents and children. But it cannot be ignored that such behavior has caused great harm to the life and health of living animals. The relevant salesperson claimed that this was a "normal business behavior", which was unacceptable.
It is not uncommon to use live animals to operate and ignore the life status of animals. In 2019, a shopping mall in Wuhan had no time to manage, causing all the living turtles in the claw machine to die; last year, a mobile vendor also operated a trash game in a shopping mall in Nanning. The vendor's trash projects were all living animals, and all of them were clearly marked.
, such as using live animals to carry out business activities of fun nature such as doll machines and ferrules, on the one hand, it cannot guarantee whether the animals meet relevant epidemic prevention standards, which will lead to the spread of diseases; on the other hand, although such business methods are also selling live animals, they are not the same as ordinary business activities. Selling live fish and turtles in containers such as fish tanks will not cause too much harm to the animal itself. However, live fish and turtles placed in the claw machine will inevitably be injured or even die during the claw machine's claws' repeated "rampant" fishing. Staff at the shop near the live claw machine also said that they would see some dead fish basically every day.
Therefore, in any case, the merchant’s indifference to animal life cannot be covered with “freshness”, and no business behavior can be overrepresented by respecting life. In particular, a large part of the audience that this living doll machine is for children who love animals. Using live fish and turtles for fun is not helpful for children's values of respecting life and nature.
When business activities that harm to living animals appear repeatedly, both consumers and market supervision departments need to be vigilant. Such activities cannot be summarized in just one sentence "new form". Respecting the life and survival of any animal should be a business standard that you always remember.
Written by/ Beijing News Commentator Liu Yunyun
Edited by/ Ma Xiaolong
Proofreading/ Zhao Lin
