Mass Sacrifice Has Stopped!!

[Ruth]

There are very graphic pictures on this web site.  But there is good news.  They have stopped the mass slaughter of animals!!

http://www.newser.com/story/210597/templ...imals.html

[Catherine]

The Gadhimai Festival!  Yes we have been following this story.  We posted a lot about it leading up to the last festival in 2014.  Because of all the protests it was much smaller than they had planned.

The protests continued after the festival with the view to making 2014 the last time it ever happened.  A lot of people did a lot of work to make this happen.

I think Gadhimai is a turning point for animal rights protestors. It is a centuries old, traditional massacre of animals and it has been stopped. If Gadhimai can stop then so can all the other horrible events that involve the brutal killing of animals.

In the same way Cecil the lion is a turning point. People are now horrified by trophy hunters and repulsed by their actions.

It is important to keep posting and talking about these things.  When tradition and long standing practice are used as an excuse for animal cruelty we can point to Gadhimai and say it changed so other traditions can change.

If it is wrong, it doesn't matter how long it has been going on, it is still wrong.

[Tobi]

I agree with every word you said Catherine. Thank you for posting this, to remind us of the effect public pressure had on that terrible Gadhimai 'event'.

Whether we can get the Yu Lin 'festival' stopped remains to be seen....but one day I feel we will. We must keep trying and never forget about doing what we can to petition against these cruelties.

[Catherine]

Quote:Whether we can get the Yu Lin 'festival' stopped remains to be seen....but one day I feel we will. We must keep trying and never forget about doing what we can to petition against these cruelties.

We may not stop Yu Lin this year. I do hope we can diminish it. What we can do is make sure that everybody knows about it.
When enough people are repulsed, disgusted and angry about something then that something cannot go on. Public opinion is a powerful tool in the right hands. You will notice I used the word tool not weapon. Public opinion has been used negatively as a weapon in so many cases. We want to use it as a tool to build good things. We are not so much tearing down animal abuse as we are building animal respect and rights. We need to replace the wrong with a strong right.

It will come for Yu Lin and then we will turn and work on something else. The job of making the world a better place is never finished. It is the doing of the job that matters most and it is the best reason for living.

[Ruth]

Yes, all of these festivals for slaughtering animals are being brought to light and our voices are being heard. Maybe one day they will stop saying "it was just an animal". Animals matter, we are animals, too, all animals matter.

[Catherine]

There is a real change in thinking about animals. If you reflect on attitudes you heard as a child and what you hear now it is obvious that we are getting better. It just takes time to change the thinking of the whole planet and that is what we need to do.

We live in exciting times. I think a lot of change has happened and will happen in our lifetimes.  I will live to see bull fighting and the seal slaughter ended. Who knows what other good things we will see.

[Ruth]

I hope the bull fighting and seal slaughter will end now. People act like such idiots when they harm animals. They talk about culling the population of deer and other animals. Well, they can just spay and neuter them and then release them back into the wild. It seems they are too lazy to do this and don't want to spend the money needed for it. One day, I hope, that the animals will be thought to be our equals just as they really are!

[Catherine]

Culls never work because they destabilize the whole ecosystem. I would think that they could put out something for the animals to eat that would prevent conception temporarily. You don't want to actually sterilize animals because we might need them to breed in another year. I don't think it would be good to have a year with no babies born. It would be bad for the population demographics.

We might be better to leave things alone and let nature find its own balance. 


When we get involved we only make things worse and we do cruel things.

[Ruth]

I am so sickened by what they do when then cull. It makes no sense to me!

[Catherine]

Culls are terrible. The kill young healthy animals and they break up family/pack/herd units. Nature thins a herd by removing the weak and the sick. The strong go on to produce strong offspring. A wise old herd leader would survive to guide the younger ones.
Culls are unable to take these things into account and so they do more damage that just killing some of the animals. It is a bit of a social genocide for a herd.