As a VIVA campaigner in North Wales, I was was among a local group which took part in a national day of action against giants Tesco to protest against the store's trade in live turtles in China.
We wrapped ourselves in green netting - mirroring the constrictive ways live turtles are displayed, then handed out leaflets to shoppers with the slogan “Every Little Hurts”.
After purchasing a controlling share in the Chinese chain Hymall, Tesco continued its policy of selling live turtles in its Chinese stores.
Displayed on ice under supermarket lights, turtles are trussed up in netting to stop them escaping. Because of their slow metabolism, turtles are extremely difficult to kill.
The species now on sale in by Tesco is the Chinese soft shell turtle which is butchered in store by shop assistants in front of customers by cutting off its head with a knife - if they can get it out of its shell.
The head can live for up to an hour after separation from the body, so the assistant smashes the severed head with a hammer!
Tesco also sells live turtles for customers to kill at home in any way they choose, usually boiling them alive or by removing the shell and cutting strips of flesh as required from the still-living animal for freshness.
Turtles in net bags on the supermarket shelf
China has no animal welfare standards of any kind, and Tesco is happy to take advantage of that. It claims it demands “high standards of animal welfare” but you couldn't get worse welfare than this.
We want to know why Tesco, one of the UK's largest supermarket chains, is doing what it would not dare do at home?
It knows British shoppers would be outraged to find live animals sold for meat in British stores. The money made from the abject torture all comes back to Britain.
Obviously every little helps when it comes to profit.
After Viva launched its campaign against the sale of live turtles, Tesco agreed to drop the sale of one or two species of turtle it was selling, after claiming for two years that they were farmed.
According to research from California, large numbers are imported from the US and are mostly wild-caught.
Tesco has ignored reptile experts’ evidence of cruelty and statements that the trade is contributing to the decimation of wild stocks.
Tesco claims its turtles are farmed in the Shanghai river, but leading reptile biologists say this is impossible to monitor and believe that most animals are collected from the wild.
Our campaign at Abergele Tesco received a positive response. We distributed all our leaflets and even had a couple of shoppers leave their empt trolleys and refuse to even go into Tesco, saying they would be taking their custom elsewhere.
For information on Viva's campaign, visit http://www.viva.org.uk/campaigns/turtle/index.html
