Jacinda Ardern and the New Zealand Government appear to have a blind spot in Brand Kindness, writes Save Animals from Exploitation’s Campaigns Officer MONA OLIVER.
Tens of thousands of NZ animals are still enduring horrendous conditions on ships bound for countries with low animal welfare and unregulated slaughter. The government needs to extend its circle of compassion and start fronting up with answers to the question of Live Export.
The story of Dr Drip highlights what is wrong in the horseracing industry, write Lynley Tulloch and Sandra Kyle.
Dr Drip was an American multi-stakes winner, a racehorse with an impressive pedigree, bred for big things. During his career he earned a barrel of money for his owners but when he was no longer profitable they got rid of him. Many ex-racehorses go unceremoniously straight to slaughter at a fraction of their natural life span, but Dr Drip changed hands between owners until he ended up with Jermaine Dewayne Doucet Jr, an 18-year-old from an impoverished Louisiana community. The day he was discovered Dr Drip had no water and the pile of hay in his pen was molding and inedible. He was so weak and skinny that he didn’t even have the energy to swish the flies off his tail, and his underside was covered with maggot-infested sores. The ex-thoroughbred was too far gone to save, and was euthanised the next day.
Dr Drip had been a magnificent specimen in his prime, a perfect example of equine athleticism. Yet even though they are large, strong animals horses are very easily hurt, especially when they are being whipped to run at dangerously high speeds on hard ground.
That racing hurts horses should be obvious. Those who think a day at the races is harmless are either uninformed, or don’t care about horses. No doubt it’s great fun for people who attend race meets in their thousands, wearing slinky dresses and stiletto heels, derby hats and bow ties, and sipping champagne. It’s an opportunity to see and be seen, get a little tipsy, and if you’re lucky go home richer than you arrived. What’s wrong with that? What’s wrong with having a bit of fun?
There’s no problem with having fun so long as your fun does not hurt other beings. In horse racing as in so many other cases, we think nothing of exploiting animals for our benefit. Whipping a horse on to go at ever more dangerous speeds is just one example. Another, widespread in the industry, is to begin training horses at the age of just two years old when their bones have not stopped growing. Intensive training at this stage can cause tendons to break and bones to chip and fracture. Burst arteries is another injury that is more likely to happen to a juvenile horse. A number of racehorse deaths are caused by forcing a horse to perform on pre-existing injuries, which are not always obvious. Horses, like many animals, are very stoic. They could be in constant pain and you might not even know it.The problem of horse injuries and deaths is further complicated by the use of drugs . A racehorse who is laid off because of injuries is not profitable for the owners, so unscrupulous veterinarians and trainers administer drugs to mask the effects, resulting in the injury being aggravated and worsened.
International animal rights organisation, PETA claim that studies show one in 22 horses fail to finish a race due to injuries sustained and that three thoroughbreds die every day in North America from race injuries.In the past eighteen weeks, there have been 28 horse deaths at just one racetrack, Santa Anita Park in Los Angeles.
Like many other racehorses, so long as he was winning Dr Drip was safe, but the moment he started finishing further back in the field he wasn’t worth the effort, and was ‘retired’. We often talk about ‘retired race horses’, as if there is some form of animal retirement that compares to human retirement. There is not – it’s a disingenuous way of creating the illusion that the animals we selfishly use get some kind of deserved rest after their hard work.
Let’s set the record straight. A survey funded by the RSPCA in
2002-2003 in Australia found that standardbreds and thoroughbreds were exited
from the industry for a range of reasons – including poor performance,
ill-health or injury, or unsuitable temperament and breeding. The fate of many
of these horses remains unknown due to no tracking system. Some get rehomed for
other equestrian purposes while 6% of thoroughbreds and 17% of standardbreds
get sent to the slaughter house.
Horse arriving at a slaughterhouse
Save Animals From Exploitation (SAFE) revealed that in New
Zealand 1962 animals were slaughtered in 2011. That is a lot of individual horses
for a small country with a small population.
The problem is we don’t see them as individuals
when they’re earmarked for slaughter, but as a statistic. We don’t look into their eyes and see the
sadness, the terror. For horses bound for slaughter their trial begins on the truck, where they are sometimes
transported for more than 24 hours at a time without food, water or rest. Such are the conditions of transport that horses
are sometimes hurt or even killed in transit.
By the time they arrive at the slaughterhouse they are exhausted, stressed,
bewildered and fearful.
When it comes to a quick and painless death, it is harder to achieve with horses than it is for bovines, sheep, and other large mammals. Horses are skittish by nature (owing to their heightened fight-or-flight response), which makes accurate pre-slaughter stunning difficult. As a result, horses can sometimes remain conscious during dismemberment. Before the last domestic plant closed in 2007, the United States Department of Agriculture documented rampant cruelty violations and severe injuries to horses. Gail A Eisnitz, in her book ‘Slaughterhouse’ interviewed one horse slaughterhouse worker who said: “You move so fast you don’t have time to wait till a horse bleeds out. You skin him as he bleeds. Sometimes a horse’s nose is down in the blood, blowing bubbles, and he suffocates.”
It’s time to rethink our relationship to non-human animals and
stop abusing and slaughtering them. If
you are in doubt about whether we should treat an animal like a horse as a form
of entertainment and profit, and then send it off to slaughter, then try
putting your feet in the horse’s shoes.
It may be hard to understand the precise origins of human cruelty, but the harm our actions cause to non-human animals need not be difficult to change writes End Animal Slaughter’s SANDRA KYLE.
There are a number of theories about why human beings exhibit cruel behaviour. Christian fundamentalists say that our troubles started when Eve tempted Adam with the forbidden apple leading to The Fall, while scientists assert cruelty is more likely to be the result of our evolutionary past.
Many psychologists maintain
that in order to be cruel to others we have to ‘dehumanize’ them, as with the institution
of slavery in the 18th and 19th centuries, and the Nazi’s
treatment of the Jews in the Second World War.
There is a famous social psychology experiment conducted in the 1960s,
known as The Milgram experiment. Stanley
Milgrim and his team recruited 40 men to participate in an experiment on ‘memory
and learning’. The subjects were from
a diverse range of occupations and varying levels of education, and were told
that they would be paid for their participation, no matter what the
outcome. One by one the men were taken into a room and
placed in front of a control panel that ostensibly delivered electric shocks to
other participants (actors, actually), who were located elsewhere in the
building. Standing beside them was an
official looking ‘scientist’ in a white coat carrying a clipboard and making
notes. As he instructed the men to
steadily increase the amount of voltage to near fatal level, every one of the
subjects did so. Delivering what they believed to be real
electric shocks the men showed signs of tension and stress, sometimes severe,
but even though they could hear the screams from the other room they did it
anyhow.
Milgrim experiment on obedience to authority
Milgrim’s research was considered
evidence that German soldiers in concentration camps were only able to carry
out such atrocities against the inmates because of unquestioning obedience and
deference to authority.
It is doubtful that there is a ‘silver bullet’ for understanding cruel behaviour however. Sometimes acts of cruelty come from our sense of justice and outrage. We may want to hurt and punish others, because they have hurt us or those we love. Included in expressions of cruelty by humans to other humans are some motivated by extreme racial biases. A recent example of this is the recent Christchurch massacre by a single gunman of peaceful Muslims praying in their mosques.
Some of these theories of cruelty may bear more weight than others, but it could be that pinpointing where cruelty in human nature comes from may be a difficult, and even pointless, exercise. As human beings we are a bundle of characteristics, and thankfully, along with the potential for cruelty, there is a great capacity for empathy, compassion, kindness and caring.
When it comes to other animals who we know feel pain and fear just like us, the majority of humans would not directly hurt them. We love our pets, who we think of as members of our family. Yet there are many animals we continue to hurt indirectly, and this is widespread and sanctioned as normal behaviour. Eating the flesh of animals is an example, especially those that have led lives of torture in factory farms.
In order to continue with behaviours that deep down we know hurt
sentient beings, we are forced to rationalize,
and live with ‘cognitive dissonance’. Eating meat isn’t cruel because… Wearing wool isn’t cruel because…. Testing on animals isn’t cruel because…. Having
a flutter on the racetrack isn’t cruel because…. I don’t want to think about it… so I’ll think
about something else instead.
To overcome these tendencies in ourselves we have to be ruthlessly honest and courageous enough to change the harmful behaviours we engage in. As far as cruelty to other animals is concerned, we need to put ourselves in the place of the sentient being our actions are harming. There may have been a time when we needed to eat and otherwise exploit other animals, but that is certainly no longer true. If we stop indirectly hurting animals, we will not only become happier and more peaceful human beings, but also develop a sense of wonder and appreciation for all Life. Refusing to change our behaviours on the other hand, means we continue to be a direct link to their egregious suffering and premature deaths. Knowing how much they suffer I think the choice is clear. We have to stop hurting other animals.
This weekend, families across the country and around the world will celebrate Easter with leg of lamb dinners and egg hunts. The tradition of eating lamb at Easter has old testament roots, and was part of Jewish Passover observances before the birth of Christianity. Similarly, eggs have been a symbol of rebirth and new life since ancient times, but it was Mesopotamian Christians who first adopted them as an Easter food.
While eating lamb and eggs at Easter reaches back to antiquity we should not in this, or in any other case, accept tradition blindly. While traditions are well and good – they give us a sense of comfort, pride and belonging – they must always be revised and adapted in light of an ever-changing society. If a particular tradition is cruel or harmful to sentient beings (as in many that involve other animals) then it is immoral to continue with it, and it should be stopped. As celebrated Animal Rights Activist Maneka Gandhi wrote in the article ‘Tradition is no excuse for Cruelty’, about a barbaric Indian rite of passage ritual (Ukweshwama) where a group of youths torment and slaughter a terrified bull with their bare hands:
“While I respect culture,
this bull-killing ritual causes extreme suffering to an innocent creature and
has no place in the modern world. Tradition is not an excuse for cruelty, and
many societies have ended or are working to end ‘traditional’ practices—such as
slavery, cannibalism, infanticide, female circumcision, foot-binding,
bullfighting, and fox hunting—that cause animals or humans to suffer”.
Is it
acceptable now to eat the flesh of baby animals to commemorate the birth and
death of Christ, himself called The Lamb of God because he submitted meekly to
his persecutors ‘like a lamb led to the slaughter’.? Isaiah 53:7:
Is it acceptable now to eat the eggs of mother hens who are confined to tiny cages on factory farms for their entire wretched lives? Even free range eggs involve cruelty such as killing one day old roosters by shredding or suffocation. I think the answer is clear. The tradition of eating chocolate eggs can stay, but the practise of consuming eggs that involve extreme cruelty to sentient beings has no place in a progressive, compassionate society.
This Easter I hope you will remember the gentle lamb and the mother hen. If you still eat them, it will be an opportunity for you to reflect on the cruelty involved getting them to your plate, and to begin your transition to a harmless diet.
Getting on to 25 percent of the entire world is now vegetarian/vegan, and the number keeps growing. The end of animal agriculture is on the horizon. End Animal Slaughter predicts that by 2025 slaughterhouses in the Western world will be closed, exploited workers will no longer have to do their soul-destroying jobs, and billions of animals like Rosie will be liberated. Read about ‘The Year of the Vegan’ here:
End Animal Slaughter contributor LYNLEY TULLOCH knows who the animal ‘terrorists are’ – and it’s not the activists!
“In Australia, as in New Zealand and elsewhere, the animal agriculture industry terrorises millions of animals as a matter of routine. They hold them in detention camps, brand them, breed from them, kill their offspring, and milk them.
Then they are sent off to be gassed in chambers (if you are a pig) or stunned and bled out with a knife stuck in your throat (for bovines, goats and lambs). If you are a chicken, it is even worse. You get to hang upside down with your feet shackled while being dumped in a tub of electrified water”.
We too are animals, and we create our world within our own minds writes End Animal Slaughter Contributor PAUL STEVENSON. When we begin to extend our circle of compassion to include all beings we will transform not only ourselves, but the world we live in.
For millennia we have
treated other species of animals as if they were unthinking, unfeeling
automata. Descartes believed that because animals lacked a soul they could not
feel pain or anxiety, and although his views were not universally accepted they
did gain widespread influence.
Rene Descartes
The tragedy is that
they helped to provide people with an excuse for treating animals with impunity
on a vast scale, and that attitude has persisted right up to the present day.
However, we have known since 1859, when Darwin’s “Origin of Species” was
published, that we are all related and have all descended by the process of
natural selection from one common ancestor. We too are animals, no better and
no worse than any other species, just different.
Charles Darwin
The similarities
between us and other animals are vastly greater than the differences,
especially the similarities between all species of vertebrates. We all share
the same skeletal body plan and possess similar organs. We share similar
nervous, endocrine, circulatory and digestive systems, all of which operate in
much the same way. It cannot be denied that other species experience pain as we
do. Similarly, a great many of them experience similar feelings and emotions as
us. We are also discovering by the day how complex their societies are. Given
the above it is hardly surprising that we share so much in common; in fact it
would be astonishing if we didn’t. In view of this we must radically revise our
treatment of them.
Animals share not only a similar physiology, but similar emotions
I believe that we have
an obligation to treat other animals with respect and avoid causing them
unnecessary suffering. The way we treat others has profound implications for us
for the following reasons.
There are two aspects
to our behaviour – its effect on others and its effect on ourselves. This is
similar to Newton’s Third Law in physics, “for every action there is an equal
and opposite reaction”. However, although the reaction may well be opposite in
behavioural terms, its effect may be
very unequal because of the influence of the mind. Our world is not so much a
geographic place as a cognitive one. All we ever know is the product of our own
mind, so the meanings our mind makes are our world. It is a world of our own
making, our own personal, subjective and cognitive world.
It is our own thoughts that determine our happiness and peace
The way we treat
others therefore has profound implications for our own state of mind. Like
produces like, and when we treat others well we similarly treat ourselves well,
and come to like ourselves more. However, the opposite is also true – when we
ill-treat others we ill-treat ourselves and come to dislike ourselves. This has
an enormous effect on our personal sense of well being, as in order to feel
happy we must like ourselves.
When we ill-treat
others we cannot like ourselves and thereby deprive ourselves of peace in our
heart. When we speak of “others” we must necessarily include other species of
animals for the reasons described above. Now that we know they experience life
very much like us we cannot continue to callously exploit them. We cannot
permit ourselves to respect and cherish other animals when our sole reason for
keeping them is to steal their products and their lives. We cannot allow
ourselves to know them and their suffering. We are forced to treat them with
contempt rather than respect. As in wartime, we have to deny the enemy’s
humanity in order to destroy him.
But in hardening our
hearts to their suffering we harden ourselves. In refusing to see and hear them
we reduce ourselves into small, hard, cold people. This then becomes our world.
We live in a small, hard, and cold world.
It should therefore come as no surprise to discover that so many people live deeply unsatisfying lives. Yet when we cease abusing other creatures and begin treating them with kindness and respect, the opposite becomes true. Our hard hearts soften as we begin to extend our circle of compassion to include every living being. We do not have to cross oceans to find the New World. Our mind becomes our own New World, our personal Paradise Garden.
The notion of ‘ahimsa’ provides a clear path to guide moral treatment of other animals, writes End Animal Slaughter’s Sandra Kyle
Today I found a photo of the Prime Minister of New Zealand’s partner, a celebrity fisher with his own television show, holding an enormous game fish that he had just reeled in. The giant bass, so big it took three men to hold him, had blood congealed around his wounded mouth where the hook had torn through his delicate skin as he sought to escape his hunters. This photo with the beaming smiles of the fishers and the lifeless body of the bass shocked me, and a question formed in my mind. Can we say that fishing is wrong, when so many ‘good’ people go fishing? Isn’t morality subject to time and place, and dependent on culture and tradition? Is there even any such thing as Objective Morality?
The old saying ‘Do not judge until you walk a mile in someone’s shoes’ is one I am fond of. It reminds us that life is not a level playing field, and that we all receive and filter information differently. Genetics, upbringing, education, friends, life experience and encounters, cognitive biases – even, some might say, karma – are different for each of us, and all of these play a part in determining our behaviour.
Our conditioning also affects what we believe is ‘right’ and ‘wrong’. In a world that is increasingly diverse, and therefore increasingly tolerant of difference (it might not seem that way, but it is) moral relativism is growing. We may well ask: therefore: Are there any moral certainties any more? If there are, then what are they?
The way I see it there is a key ingredient to a universal and powerful moral objectivity and this is the notion of harm. The moral equivalent is ‘ahimsa’ (Sanskrit) or harmlessness.
Every living animal, human and non-human, so long as it possesses a rudimentary nervous system, experiences harm. Nature is no touchy-feely mother. She is the Mother from Hell, dishing out harm to her children with complete impunity. Natural disasters, disease, difficulties, accidents are her stock in trade, and because she has equipped her children with emotions, we suffer emotional as well as physical harm – a double whammy. When you think about it, Nature’s modus operandi is the very soul of heartlessness – Survival of the Fittest. Anyone who has seen moments-old hatchling turtles being picked off by seagulls as they frantically scramble towards the water’s edge – to take just one example from a million possibilities – has no illusions about Nature’s goodness. She is completely indifferent to suffering, and the best you could say of her is that she is impartial! But we humans need not be so unfeeling. We are rational, and can make compassionate choices. We can be better than Nature.
Of course, we are always harming others, sometimes intentionally, sometimes unintentionally. I am not talking about unintentional harm here. We harm those around us, and our environment, through our deeds, our thoughts and our words. We harm the environment by industrial development, land reclamation, spraying toxic chemicals, choking oceans with plastic waste and a myriad other ways. We harm our fellow creatures by refusing to acknowledge their sentience and their rights, equal to our own, to live their natural lives. We hunt them. We keep them in tiny cages in darkened smelly sheds where they cannot even walk, cannot even stand up. We genetically modify them causing them to become deformed and die prematurely. We force them to lead sterile lives in laboratories because we want to experiment on them. We deliberately put them in harm’s way to be entertained by, or to profit from them. We sacrifice them for religious reasons. We murder them in their billions every single year, so we can eat them, even though we and the planet would be much healthier if we didn’t. It is a holocaust of unimaginable proportions, the harm we routinely cause to other sentient creatures. We cannot keep denying its enormity. The time has come to look at the harm we are causing, and to stop it.
I would like to finish these musings by coming back to the example I began with: fishing. We cannot plead ignorance any more; the scientific jury is no longer out. They’ve announced that Fish are sentient, intelligent and sensitive. They feel pain and fear. They are inquisitive, have long term memories, learn fast, and their complex social relationships and mating behaviours rival other animal groups. If we are to follow the path of ‘harmlessness’ in our guide for moral behaviour, then this means that fishing is wrong and therefore we shouldn’t be doing it. It means that our exploiting and killing other animals is wrong, and we shouldn’t be doing it.
It is all quite simple. ‘Primum non nocere’. “First, do no harm” This is the key to moral certainty in a pluralistic world. If we think of ourselves as moral beings, and wish to lead moral lives, then we have to stop harming other animals.
End Animal Slaughter’s Sandra Kyle has been visiting India for more than twenty-five years, and has recently returned from her latest trip. In the second of a series of articles for this website on the state of animals in India, she looks at illegal trafficking of cattle, and the rise of leather production in Kerala and Bangladesh.
One of the most beautiful animals I have ever seen is the Indian cow. Imposing in size, but with a sweet, docile and curious nature, the native breed is most commonly light in colour, although there are brown and pied cows as well. A distinguishing feature of the true Brahman cow is the distinctive hump, evolved over time to help the animal survive in hot, arid conditions. These animals are well-proportioned, with floppy ears, large upcurving horns, and enormous expressive eyes and long straight eyelashes.
Revered by Hindus as ‘sacred’, the Indian cow is also called “Mother” because she provides milk and, literally, the skin off her back. Yet this beautiful, gentle animal who gives so much is egregiously treated by the very people who revere her. While it is mainly Christians and Muslims who carry out the trafficking, slaughter and leather processing, it is Hindus who sell their cattle to the traffickers. The whole sordid story is one of cruelty and corruption of the most egregious kind.
Nearly twenty years ago an expose by PETA first brought the problem to light. This created a scandal that saw celebrities such as Chrissie Hynd, Sir Paul McCartney, and the Dalai Llama calling for an end to the trafficking.
The problem with illegal trafficking began in the 1990s, when the Hindu nationalist party (BJP) came to power. When protection for the cow was enhanced, including heavy restrictions around slaughter, an almost entirely clandestine trade in cows for beef and leather began. This illegal trafficking was mainly to Christian Kerala in the far South (where cow slaughter is still legal) and neighbouring Bangladesh, a Muslim nation. While regulations exist, widespread bribery and corruption by government officials and veterinary surgeons means that they are not enforced.
Prominent Indian Animal Rights activist and veteran campaigner Mrs Meneka Gandhi, Minister for Women and Children in the Narendra Modi government, said at the time of the initial expose in 2000: “There is a huge amount of trafficking of cattle to both West Bengal and Kerala. The ones going to West Bengal go by truck and train and they go by the millions. The law says you cannot transport more than 4 per truck but they are putting in up to 70. When they go by train, each wagon is supposed to hold 80 to 100, but they cram in up to 900. I’ve seen 900 cows coming out of the wagon of a train, and 400 to 500 of them came out dead.”
‘The cattle are unloaded just before Calcutta, at Howrah, then beaten and taken across to Bangladesh by road. Bangladesh, which has no cows of its own, is the biggest beef exporter in the region. Between 10,000 and 15,000 cows go across that border every day. You can make out the route taken by the trucks by the trail of blood they leave behind.”
When their destination is Kerala, the cows are taken on foot, tens of thousands per day, to slaughterhouses on the border. “Because they have walked and walked and walked the cattle have lost a lot of weight, so to increase the weight and the amount of money they will receive, the traffickers make them drink water laced with copper sulphate, which destroys their kidneys and makes it impossible for them to pass the water – so when they are weighed they have 15kg of water inside them and are in extreme agony,” Mrs Gandhi stated.
“It’s a hideous journey,” wrote PETA President, Ingred Newkirk, who followed a caravan of cows to Kerala. “To keep them moving, drivers beat the animal across their hip bones, where there is no fat to cushion the blows. The cows are not allowed to rest or drink. Many cows sink to their knees. Drivers beat them and twist their battered tails to force them to rise. If that doesn’t work they torment the cows into moving by rubbing hot chilli peppers and tobacco into their eyes.”
When they finally make it to the slaughterhouses, the PETA investigation revealed, they were slaughtered with repeated hammer blows, which beat their skulls to a pulp.
It is a devastating story, and the worst of it is that it is still happening today.
I recently watched a video that took a look at tanneries on the India-Bangladeshi border. Skins are acquired by the tanneries from neighbouring slaughterhouses, and processed by employees working under appalling conditions. These places are swelteringly hot, and there is an ever-present pungent stench from toxic chemicals used to process the hides. The poorest of the poor work in this industry, including innocent children who also handle the chemicals. Eventually the waste spills out into the streets and then into the waterways, making them black and viscous. Humans, fish and other animals all become sick or die as a result of this industry.
Another shocking revelation in the video I watched were images of a buyer for an Italian shoe company walking around and inspecting the hides. In subsequent shots we saw shoes being placed in boxes with an Italian brandname, to be packaged and exported to Europe.The illegal trafficking of cattle, their treatment, slaughter, and processing of their hides for leather is a story of unbelievable cruelty, but also poverty, greed and ignorance. It is also a story of unethical employers who exploit their labour, and wealthy international companies who perpetuate the misery in order to profit from their immoral gains.
There is so much misery tied up with cattle meat and leather in India. Animals transported in punishing conditions who are whipped and beaten as they travel to their destination. Primitive and barbaric slaughter methods in unregulated slaughterhouses. Unsanitary conditions and poor pay for workers, including children. A toxic environment that makes people and animals alike sick.
This is the chain of production of some Italian-brand shoes and no doubt many other High Street brands. It is why vegans don’t wear leather, and why non-vegans shouldn’t either.
End Animal Slaughter’s Sandra Kyle recently visited India to receive the Phillip Wollen Animal Welfare Award. The Award was presented by the Haryana-based Teachers’ Association for Animal Rights, and was given to her by prominent Animal Rights activist Meneka Gandhi, Minister for Women and Children in the Narendra Modi government.
During her two weeks’ stay Sandra was struck by the numbers of cows wandering the streets of towns and cities. Read her take on the problem of ‘The Sacred Cow’ in India.
The cow in India has long had a unique status. Known by such names as “Mother”, “Kamdhenu”, “Surabhi”, ‘The Sacred Cow Who Fulfils All Desires’, she is depicted in iconography as a white cow with a female head and breasts, the wings of a bird, and the tail of a peacock. However while there are temples devoted to Hanuman (Monkey God) and Ganesha (Elephant God), cows are not generally worshipped independently as a goddess, but honoured by protecting and venerating the living animal. While this may sound very cosy for the cow, all is not as it seems. In my opinion there is not one happy street cow in India.
Traditionally, spent cows who could no longer give milk have been sent to slaughter, which was carried out by minority non-Hindus. Recent legislation preventing slaughter means that owners who cannot afford to keep their animals release them onto the streets to fend for themselves. This is creating a dire situation for the cows, as well as posing traffic risks on India’s already chaotic roads. It also highlights the pressing and persistent problem of waste disposal in this country.
Every year, tens of thousands of cows are killed in accidents in India. They are often seen walking across roads in the middle of the traffic, or standing on traffic islands. Generally they gather near the ubiquitous rubbish piles, where they root around for enough food to keep them from starving. While I saw many skinny cows and calves, I also some who looked quite bloated. I didn’t understand the cause of their large stomachs until I visited a cow hospital in Haryana, and witnessed an operation.
The hospital I visited is the Gau Seva Dham (Holy Mother Cow Hospital). The spiritual leader is Devi Chitralekhaji a young woman in her early twenties. Her biography states that she was born in a nearby village and her life’s purpose took root at the age of seven, when she was initiated by a ‘great Saint’. The little girl began devoting her seva (service) to the Holy Mother Cow and, a few years ago, with donations from her followers, she opened the Gau Seva Dham.
The Manager of the Centre escorted our party around the facility. Like any hospital there are ‘wards’, sectioned off portions of a large open sided area, covered with soft sand to make the patients more comfortable. There is an Intensive Care ward, a Cancer ward, a Burns ward, an Orthopedic ward. We saw some remarkable and upsetting sights at this hospital. A number of cows in the Intensive Care ward were dying, including one so emaciated and weak that she could not raise her head. In this ward I also saw one of the most pitiful sights I have seen. A cow had unsuccessfully tried to birth a stillborn calf, visible in the birth sac, halfway out of his mother’s vagina. There was nothing the staff could do for this poor girl other than administer pain relief, and wait until she was released from her suffering. In the Burns ward I saw two cows with pink wrinkly skin, who were recovering from having acid thrown on them. Cows with visible tumours, some gigantic, were being treated in the cancer ward, while in the orthopaedic ward a small calf who had had his leg amputated as a result of a traffic accident was learning to move around on three legs. Before long, I was told, he would be fitted with an artificial leg by the Prosthetics team.
Another memorable sight was a cow undergoing an operation carried out by a team of veterinarians and attendants. Standing in a restraining device, this girl was fully conscious, having been given local anaesthetic prior to having the contents of her stomach emptied, a procedure that can last up to four hours. Near the operating table was a large bucket where the surgeons were placing the rubbish they pulled from her stomach. I watched in amazement as tangled string, bits of cardboard, and especially, plastic bags containing rotting food were pulled from her rumen and placed in the container. Plastic is particularly deadly for cows, who cannot digest or expel it from their system, and as a result the toxic plastic accumulates inside their stomachs, eventually leading to a slow and painful death. The cow I saw operated on was one of the lucky ones; but this is an expensive and lengthy procedure, and is not the answer to the problem. The long term answer is an outright ban on plastic bags, and more regulation regarding the disposal of rubbish in India. Feeding and watering stations for cattle away from traffic is another option that could be explored.
The cow may be sacred in Hinduism, but the living, breathing animal is far from venerated. Once they have fulfilled their purpose they are let loose to lead difficult, dangerous lives, largely ignored or tolerated but sometimes abused by the population. And there is another shocking aspect to the misery of the sacred cow in this country, and that is how they are abused in the production of leather, which I will cover in a follow-up story.
