12/03/15 Prison Sentence For Water Giving?
Animal Friends indicate a moral outrage of the meat industry
- The essence of this story is the legalized animal abuse
The international and the local media, recently, broke the news about the Canadian activist, Anita Kranjc, who was threatened with 10 years of prison sentence, as well as a 35,000 kn fine, because she gave water to the dehydrated pigs in the truck on the way to the slaughterhouse. The pig owner filed suit against her, claiming that she gave an "unknown-liquid" to the pigs, and, thus, endangered the public health.
This appaling case detects all the moral monstrosity and ruthless hypocrisy of the meat industry.
As the animal rights association, we want to highlight several key facts:
It has been said in the press that the pig owner, Van Boekel, justifying himself, asserts that he treats his pigs ethically right, according to all the standards and laws. What Van Boekel doesn't say is the following: in almost the whole world, law regulations usually have nothing to do with the ethical treatment when it comes to animals, and food standards have no background, as was proved many times, in the public health concern. Nevertheless, his statement draws a parallel between acting in accordance with the regulations and instant reaching ethics, which is not the case.
Laws and regulations a bureaucrat and capitalist Van Boekel calls upon allow livestock breeding in a terrible torment, pain, and filth. They approve of a life-long animal confinement in such small cages that they can barely move, and, for this reason, their muscles atrophy. These laws allow cutting of the body parts of animals, such as genitals, noses, ears, tails, etc., without the use of any anesthesia, because it's not profitable. These laws permit the owners simply not to cure the sick animals, so that they can save up, which means that many farm animals spend the whole of their short lives with broken and unhealed bones, and open wounds. These laws permit so much over-exploatation of the animals for milk and eggs, that, in a few years only, their organisms completely collapse with exhaustion of the nutrient supplies, their bones crack, their organs stop working, and the animals grow old five hundred times earlier than they would in normal conditions.
These identical "ethical" laws allow practice such as grinding of alive and newly born chickens in meat grinders, animal choking in plastic bags, beating, maltreatment and severe injury during transportation, deprivation of food and water on purpose, as well as deliberately increasing stress in them. Moreover, they allow no control over the process of animal stunning before the slaughter. For this reason, a big number of animals are completely conscious while their guts are being torn out, their body parts cut, whereas they are being cooked alive, or their skin stripped down... All of these is legally permitted, to some extent, in most countries in the world.
To call upon the laws when it's about ethical animal treatment is an intelectual insult of an average informed and average intelligent person. Laws are nothing more than compromises which help the society to maintain the status quo, in which the changes different from the established norms are deliberately avoided and penalized, even when it's about the changes for better. To put some fundamental ethics to the laws is the same as to put any sense for the ethical questions to the mindless machine.
Also, the same food regulations, Van Boekel calls upon, comprise utterly regular presence of harmful and cancerogenic substances in the food for people. What is encouraged is the meat consumption, which is proved to be both cancerogenic and full of cholesterol which devastates the cardiovascular system, and the farm animals are pumped with antibiotics, pesticides, GMO-food, and other industrial toxins. All these ingredients end up in the human body when animal products are consumed, which make them sicker and sicker. The most fascinating thing is that none of these is even a public secret. The information and proofs about such a treatment are available to any interested individuals. Yet, laws and regulations don't find anything disputable in such treatments, and not to mention the enormous environmental damage which the industrial animal farming commits.
Eventually, after all these publicly known facts, Van Boekel claims that everybody is entiteled to their own opinions, as well as acting accordingly, as long as it doesn't harm others. At the same time, Van Boekel's treatment is harmful for the whole community, and detrimental for the planet eco-system. Furthermore, it damages his consumers' health, and, overall, it's hurtful for the animals – the bigger mercy would probably be to kill them immediatelly, instead of letting them into some of his production sections. Yet, Van Boekel considers that everybody has a right to their pernicuous treatments, wheras it's completely unacceptable to help the suffering animals, because it slowed down the delivery of the new package to the slaughterhouse. If Van Boekel was so (hypocritically) concerned about the public health safety, he should have given the water sample to the test, after the incident, and he should have accepted full responsibility for slander. He should have also paid the court costs if proved that there was no strange and toxic substances in it.
It is the time for the people to wake up, to stop believing in the definitions of proper and improper as long as the capitalists, who endanger the public health and the planet, in the name of profit, and massacre animals, impose them.
The animal rights movement grows every day, and so does the resistance of those who want the animals to remain objects. It is crucial that all the citizens become activists, because it concerns all of us and all the living beings. Therefore, if we want the world without slaves, violence, and oppresion, we must expand our compassion to the animals as well. We hope that this shocking event will encourage many people to activate, to change their habits, and examine the current situation in which animals are, as well as the existence of unbelievable laws which blame not those who torture animals, but those who indicate their suffering. Let's open our eyes and respond to injustice, and let's not forget about the essence of this story, which are the animals who suffer since they have been born until the violent death, and whose abuse is legalized and protected.