If Slaughter Houses had Glass Walls, Everyone would be a Vegetarian.”

Image by Marji Beach via Flickr

You are what you eat.

 If slaughter houses had glass walls, everyone would be a vegetarian.”

By Uttam K. Jain

The celebration of Thanksgiving spells a death knell to the turkey. Thousands of birds are slaughtered to enable Americans to celebrate this festival.

Conceived through forced and artificial insemination, the turkey begins its life’s journey in an egg form in the womb of its mother turkey caged together with many other such mothers made to go through the horrors of factory farming.  

Laid in a cage and rolled out in the form of an egg, and immediately separated  and moved to a factory-hatching environment it, together with  millions of others,  the chick enters  the world only to be forced through  extreme  tortures, pain and agony as  its mother did.  

Given only three square feet of floor space on which to spend its life, each bird is forced to endure beak and toe mutilations intended to prevent crowded birds from injuring one another, both procedures are performed without the use of anesthesia and can cause extreme pain, stress and even death.  

Although turkeys have a natural life expectancy of about 10 years, they are commonly slaughtered between 12 and 26 weeks of age.

When they grow up they have to endure horror. During transportation to the slaughter houses these birds are crowded in small cages with very little or no ventilation and they are even deprived of food and water during the long distance hauls that sometime take days.  When arrived at the destination to get them off the truck, these birds are thrown mercilessly handled by their necks and feet only to become ready to be hung up by their feet on a rotating conveyor with anchors.  

The conveyor moves and takes each bird to the knife to have its throat slit while it is alive.  While trampling, confused as to what’s happening to itself and trying to free itself some fall on the bloody floor only to be picked up, smashed and put back on the anchor for its only crime that it was created by artificial insemination and for no fault of its own!

 Stunning is not legally required for most farm animals. (The poultry, which comprises over 90 percent of “food animals,” is not covered under The Humane Slaughter Act).

Even when stunning is required, industry reports indicate an alarming failure rate. Standard slaughter practices, combined with gross negligence, result in immense pain and suffering for millions of animals.  So, these birds go through the torture factories while being conscious.

 Speed, not humane consideration, guides the slaughter process. Thousands of animals are dismembered or dropped into a scalding tank while they are still conscious.

  Next, these birds are thrown into a machine where their feathers, toes and beaks  are removed in few seconds.  The carcasses are then packed neatly and shipped across the nation to distribution warehouses and then to the grocery stores.

This is the bird that gets cooked, sliced and put on the dinner plates — to celebrate Thanksgiving by neatly dressed family members and invited guests, who are blissfully ignorant of the torture the turkey has suffered from the birth to the death.  

Is it not  the pinnacle of hypocrisy  indulged in by the so-called civilized society? Is there no better way to celebrate the Thanksgiving?

Paul McCartney said: “If slaughterhouses had glass walls, everyone would be a vegetarian.”

“I have no doubt that it is a part of the destiny of the human race, in its gradual improvement, to leave off eating animals,” said  Henry David Thoreau.

When most in a society consume flesh as a normal food, you have a violent society.  Most of us have heard of the saying: “Your are what you eat.”

SURPRISINGLY, A FOREIGNER OPENS OUR EYES!!!

Very interesting!!

IF THIS IS TRUE, NOW YOU KNOW WHAT HAPPENS TO ALL THE MONEY COLLECTED BY TEMPLES IN INDIA.
SURPRISINGLY, A FOREIGNER OPENS OUR EYES!!!
Believe or not, a Foreign writer opens our eyes… The Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowment Act of 1951 allows State Governments and politicians to take over thousands of Hindu Temples and maintain complete control of the money in any way they choose.

A charge has been made not by any Temple authority, but by a foreign writer, Stephen Knapp, in a book Crimes Against India and the Need to Protect Ancient Vedic Tradition, published in the United States that makes shocking reading.
 Hundreds of temples in centuries past have been built in India by devout rulers and the donations given to them by devotees have been used for the benefit of the (other) people. If, presently, money collected has ever been misused (and that word needs to be defined), it is for the devotees to protest and not for any government to interfere.

This letter is what has been happening currently under an intrusive law. It would seem, for instance, that under a Temple Empowerment Act, about 43,000 temples in Andhra Pradesh have come under government control and only 18 per cent of the revenues of these temples have been returned for temple purposes, the remaining 82 per cent being used for purposes unstated. Apparently even the world famous Tirumala Tirupati Temple has not been spared.

According to Knapp, the temple collects over Rs 3,100 crores every year and the State Government has not denied the charge that as much as 85 per cent of this is transferred to the State Exchequer, much of which goes to causes that are not connected with the Hindu community. Was it for that reason that devotees make their offering to the temples?

Another charge that has been made is that the Andhra Government has also allowed the demolition of at least ten temples for the construction of golf courses. Imagine the outcry, writes Knapp, if ten mosques had been demolished. It would seem that in Karanataka, Rs. 79 crores were collected from about two lakh temples and from that, temples received Rs seven crores for their maintenance, Muslim madrassahs and Haj subsidy were given Rs 59 crore and churches about Rs 13 crore.

Very generous of the government! Because of this, Knapp writes, 25 per cent of the two lakh temples or about 50,000 temples in Karnataka will be closed down for lack of resources, and he adds: The only way the government can continue to do this is because people have not stood up enough to stop it. Knapp then refers to Kerala where, he says, funds from the Guruvayur Temple are diverted to other government projects denying improvement to 45 Hindu temples. Land belonging to the Ayyappa Temple, apparently has been grabbed and Church encroaches are occupying huge areas of forest land, running into thousands of acres, near Sabarimala.

 A charge is made that the Communist state government of Kerala wants to pass an Ordinance to disband the Travancore & Cochin Autonomous Devaswom Boards (TCDBs) and take over their limited independent authority of 1,800 Hindu temples. If what the author says is true, even the Maharashtra Government wants to take over some 450,000 temples in the state which would supply a huge amount of revenue to correct the states bankrupt conditions.

And, to top it all, Knapp says that in Orissa, the state government intends to sell over 70,000 acres of endowment lands from the Jagannath Temple, the proceeds of which would solve a huge financial crunch brought about by its own mismanagement of temple assets. Says Knapp:
Why such occurrences are so often not known is that the Indian media, especially the English television and press, are often anti-Hindu in their approach, and, thus, not inclined to give much coverage, and certainly no sympathy, for anything that may affect the Hindu community. Therefore, such government actions that play against the Hindu community go on without much or any attention attracted to them. Knapp obviously is on record.

If the facts produced by him are incorrect, it is up to the government to say so. It is quite possible that some individuals might have set up temples to deal with lucrative earnings. But, that, surely, is none of the governments’ business? Instead of taking over all earnings, the government surely can appoint local committees to look into temple affairs so that the amount discovered is fairly used for the public good? Says Knapp: Nowhere in the free, democratic world are the religious institutions managed, maligned and controlled by the government, thus denying the religious freedom of the people of the country. But it is happening in India.

Government officials have taken control of Hindu temples because they smell money in them, they recognise the indifference of Hindus, they are aware of the unlimited patience and tolerance of Hindus, they also know that it is not in the blood of Hindus to go to the streets to demonstrate, destroy property, threaten, loot, harm and/or kill. Many Hindus are sitting and watching the demise of their culture.

They need to express their views loud and clear. Knapp obviously does not know that should they do so, they would be damned as communalists. But, it is time someone asked the Government to lay down all the facts on the table so that the public would know what is happening behind its back.
 Robbing Peter to pay Paul is not secularism. And temples are not for looting, under any name. One thought ….. that Mohammad of Ghazni has long been dead?????

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