Meanwhile Bali gets on with the real work of protecting animals. One of the most heartbreaking things for someone who really cares about animals must be to go to those places where they are killed by the million, not to save them but to try to have them killed humanely. We raise, kill and eat over 60 billion animals of one kind or another every year. As often as not with appalling cruelty and in terrible squalor, often as livestock having been transported half way round the world in awful conditions.
For such a person, one imagines they would much prefer we didn’t eat meat. There’s a very good case why we shouldn’t and a compelling case why we should eat less of it. But that’s not likely to happen any time soon. So what is this person, who’s concern for animal welfare goes far beyond most of our warm and fuzzy feelings about our pets, do about this cruel Holocaust of Animals. Not much about the holocaust it seems, but quite a lot about the cruelty. And the way to do this most effectively is to teach the animal slaughterers how to do their job more efficiently.
August this year was an interesting month in our relationship to animals. The Spanish parliament had just passed a law giving three basic human rights to primates, whom they defined as gorillas, orang utans, chimpanzees, and bonobos. It gives these great Apes right to life, right to liberty and freedom from physical or psychological torture. Spanish bishops immediately denounced the law as “post-Marxist ideology against reason and nature itself”. Thundered one bishop “there’s no doubt the next step will be euthanasia, eugenics and ethnic cleansing”, he went on. Quite how not torturing gorillas and making nice with bonobos will lead to all that, only a Jesuit could tell. The rest of the world didn’t seem much phased at the idea, and there were remarkably few cheap jeers from the tabloids .
Thin End of the Wedge
But let’s not be disingenuous here. For all of us who believe that mammals and some other species possess a range of emotional feeling very akin to our own and with whom we share up to 97% of our genes, increasingly we do not believe and are uncomfortable with the idea that “God” has given us dominion over the animals of the earth and all the fish in the sea (what’s left of them) to dispose of as we wish. In the case of large mammals most of us don’t want to eat (whales, big cats, rhinos, gorillas, thank you very much) in fact more and more of us are seeking to protect them. Cows, pigs, sheep and poultry don’t quite rate in this company because we do eat a lot of them. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t kill them nicely though, does it? Nevertheless the Bishops of Spain can spot the thin end of the wedge when they see it. They reckon if we ain’t special, then where’s their franchise gone? Actually, that’s very narrow thinking. I reckon Pope Benedict’s smartest move and great ecumenical competitive strategy would be to declare the Roman Catholic church considered all God’s creatures as parishioners and equal in the sight of the Lord. Perhaps those humans who still insisted on eating their fellow parishioners could over time be persuaded to desist. The award of indulgences for not eating meat might start the ball rolling. For recalcitrants, the next step being an encyclical promising sainthood and papal patents conferred on the first person to invent palatable meat raised in the lab from stem cells.
Indonesia Leads
More prosaic, immediate and much nearer home, perhaps the more significant step in our relationship with the animals we eat and share our planet happened right here in Bali with the Asia for Animals Conference 27-29 August at the Sanur Beach Hotel, where 250 delegates from all over the world assembled to discuss animal welfare, hosted by Bali’s Yudhisthira Foundation.
As expected good work was done covering protection of wildlife and at the end of it all I asked Sherry Grant, co-founder in 1998 of hosting Yudhisthira Foundation with Dr. Listriani Wistawan, what she felt was the most significant thing achieved at the Conference. “Two things”, she said. “First, it’s now clear ordinary people in Asia care just as much about animals as the West. Second, we’ve made real progress here in Indonesia when it comes to the humane and hygienic slaughter of livestock. The big breakthrough has come from Islamic countries themselves who understand that modern methods of stunning animals need not contravene halal dietary laws. And Indonesia has led the way.”
To confirm the point about Asia being no different from the West you have only to compare the MORI study of 2005 in the UK, a country commonly supposed to carry its love of animals to quite daffy levels, which found that 91% of British adults said there was a moral duty to minimise animal suffering and 92% said the country’s laws should reflect this. In Asia IFAW conducted a survey in China, South Korea and Vietnam about their views on the treatment of animals. They found 90% felt they had “a moral duty to minimise suffering” and nearly all of these also would like to see legislation supporting this.
That appears quite a sea change over the past few decades. Before I left England I don’t believe I ever saw, heard or smelt an abattoir. Obviously they existed, but they were decently hidden away out of sight. Not so, when I first came S.E. Asia in the late 60’s. Pigs and fowl crammed into wicker baskets in breath struggling stacks, open delivery trucks with piles of pig carcasses, bloody heads tongues lolling out over the back, were common sights. What I now see that I didn’t at the time is, it wasn’t that Asians didn’t care any more or less about animals, than we in the West, even back then. It was much more that this was the the way people in the business of slaughtering animals did things and back then most people didn’t feel they had much say about how things were run. Like most of us, they preferred not to think too much how the meat arrived on the table or in the market.
Training the Trainers
The Yudhisthira Foundation has achieved something quite remarkable. At the outset it did great work catching, treating and neutering street dogs and then returning them to the streets. But in 2002 they took a giant step. Realising they could do nothing about the appalling conditions in Bali’s slaughterhouses they understood the only way to change things was via education and training, in pointing out that humane and hygienic slaughter was not only kinder but was good business too. They clearly understood that to work, the job had to be led by Balinese people who ran the trainings, not seen as imposing Western mores. The first job was training the trainers.
From 2002 onward Yudhisthira has worked closely with Animal Welfare Training (AWTraining), a department of Bristol University in the UK, to assess and analyse the prevailing situation, convey an understanding of animal welfare and quality, establishing codes of practice, assessing/ monitoring abattoirs, and introducing progressive welfare programs. The work in Bali has now really kicked in, so much so that Jakarta took note and is following suit. Since 2004 Yudhisthira has been working with Indonesia’s Ministry of Agriculture and ongoing programs have been started throughout Java, in Jakarta, Jogya, Bogor and Surabaya.
What is so encouraging about this is that Indonesia is taking an international lead. Quite apart from the humane and economic good sense of doing so, the whole question of health around livestock in this age of bird ‘flu and threat of global epidemic has become critical. The fact that Indonesians themselves, both in government, organisations and as individuals, are now addressing the stunning/halal question has ramifications far beyond the country’s borders.
The Charitable Impulse....
While I sometimes wonder about the bona fides of some people collecting money for foundations they’ve set up and urge people to use common sense when parting with their money, I have nothing but admiration for all those who do actively pitch in to help make this a better world. My especial admiration is reserved for those who really manage to do this effectively. It seems to be a rule of the universe that this automatically rules out all those doing good work, however meritorious, but with conflicted motives or agendas. Good work still gets done, but it always, always gets in the way somehow, somewhere....
I mean you really, really do have to care about animals a lot (all animals, not just the warm and fuzzy ones) to spend your time in their killing grounds so as to make slaughterhouses more efficient, when all along you’re a vegetarian. Sentimentality don’t really do it, and political activism, though it has a place, seldom does either.
Hats off then to Sherry Grant, Dr. Lis and all at Yudisthira and all the Balinese who pitched in to get the ball rolling. Acclaim also to the Indonesian government for having the wit to get behind this and all the individuals and organisations in Java who got things going there.
