Animal welfare and animal rights are fundamentally different in their perspectives and agendas.

Animal welfare represents all aspects of animal well-being, which includes proper housing, management, disease prevention and treatment, responsible care, humane handling, and, when necessary, humane euthanasia.

The concept of animal rights is that animals have rights similar to humans'. True advocates of animal rights believe that humans do not have the right to use animals at all.

They believe that harassment, misinformation and publicity stunts are valid uses of funding donated to their organisations.

Very often, animal welfare is used as a guise to push forward animal rights agendas, even though they are totally different in nature.

Animal rights activism is a growing problem in Singapore.

These activists' coercion and intimidation tactics have caused irreversible harm to many industries dealing with animals.

Examples are when people are coerced to give up their legal pets even when regulatory authorities find no compromise on animal welfare.

It is never good to force ideologies on others, and the authorities should not be easily swayed by acts of emotion by these advocates.

This has to be addressed very seriously.

Animal rights activists and environmental activists have been labelled the No. 1 domestic terrorism threat in America.

Steps need to be taken to moderate such radical thinking and prevent it from turning into a form of domestic terrorism in Singapore.

Ong Junkai