Talking point: Animal rights

This week's talking point is animal rights. Before getting together with the members of your conversation group, go over the questions below so that ideas flow more easily the day you meet up with your friends and you can work out vocabulary problems beforehand.

• How well are animals treated in your country?
• What animal rights movements are there in your country?
• Do you agree with them?
• What sort of things do they do?
• Is it right to kill animals such as foxes, wolves, bears because they annoy people or kill cattle or there is overpopulation of them?
• How necessary are zoos?
• Should all children have a pet so that they could develop a liking for animals?
• Should dogs, specially big ones, be allowed to live in (small) flats?
• Do you think that the resources and time spent on fighting the cruelty to animals are well spent? Are there any more important issues in the world?

INTERACTION
Read the list of activities that animal rights movements campaign against.
1) Can you think of any other activities that animal rights activists find unacceptable?
2) Which of these activities do you think are
   (a) acceptable and necessary
   (b) acceptable in certain circumstances
   (c) totally unacceptable

• Testing cosmetics on live animals
• Testing new drugs and medicines on live animals
• Farming animals to make fur coats
• Selling exotic animals as pets
• Transporting live animals  thousands of miles before slaughtering them

 To illustrate the topic, you can listen to BBC's 6 Minute English episode Shark's fin soup.