Really it's just a drop in the ocean....
'Tis the season for slaughter
November 27, 10:54
It is an unfortunate fact that this "Thanksgiving" season is filled with massive animal slaughter worldwide. With the convergence of the American holiday with the Muslim celebration of Eid al-Adha and the Hindu buffalo sacrifice, the last few days have been a nightmare for animals. Although they are all obviously cruel to the animals involved, there are some differences between these mass slaughters that can be highlighted. Naturally, in our quest for true enlightenment and humanity, we can continue to reduce brutality and cruelty no matter where found and the reason behind it.
In the United States, this period represents the holiday of Thanksgiving (Nov. 26), a remembrance of the experience of the European immigrants to the "New World." Every year, this festivity is accompanied by the massive slaughter of turkeys, to the tune of some 5.32 million, according to an estimate by PETA. In this instance, the animals are killed principally for food - and they are eaten - although there is a certain ritualistic aspect of any holiday, including Thanksgiving. Nevertheless, the turkeys are principally slaughtered in order to sustain human life, which represents a practical purpose at least. Although they do not always succeed, American slaughterhouses attempt to make this mass killing as humane as possible. Relatively few turkeys are killed by private individuals, and certainly not in the streets, with blood running everywhere.
Eid al-Adha slaughter in Bangladesh
Photo by Mamun2aThis year the Muslim religious holiday of Eid al-Adha - the "Festival of Sacrifice" - begins on November 27 and continues until the 30th. Although many of the millions of animals worldwide slaughtered at this time are eaten, much meat is wasted, and this slaughter is not mainly for purposes of food but to celebrate the god Allah saving the boy Ishmael, who had been abandoned by his father, the biblical patriarch Abraham. This highly bloody mass killing therefore represents a ritual sacrifice that is often done in a very inhumane and cruel manner, in the streets and in front of children, with blood running everywhere. A case could be made that such public carnage inures children to blood, death and killing.
Nepal Hindu buffalo slaughter
AP Photo/Gemunu AmarasingheOn November 24th, Hindus of Nepal began the world's largest animal slaughter in one place, decapitating some 250,000 creatures, many of which are buffalos. Occurring every five years, the mass killing represents a sacrifice to "Gadhimai, a Hindu goddess of power." Again, although much of the meat is consumed, much also goes to waste, and the main reason behind this carnage is religious and ritualistic, with claims that "the goddess needs blood." Obviously, rational thought would dictate that no deity "needs" blood or anything else for that matter.
It is also obvious that, given the record of humankind's animal slaughter worldwide over the past millennia, no single nationality or major religious group can point fingers at another for its evident mistreatment of our fellow inhabitants of planet Earth. In the U.S., for example, some 10 billion animals are slaughtered every year for food, an appalling number indeed. While we can certainly strive to reduce that figure and to increase our humane practices, at the very least we can say that this American slaughter is not generally needless, being based on religious belief and superstition that belongs to the Stone Age. Nor does it spill blood into the streets, traumatizing our children and teaching them that life is cheap, suffering is to be ignored, and brutality and killing are not only okay, they are willed by a god or goddess of one sort or another
