THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, October 2, 1996 TAG: 9610020011
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A14 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Opinion
SOURCE: By BETTY J. ATKINSON
LENGTH: 75 lines
Last week, four ducks were shot with steel darts while they slept by a residential Virginia Beach lake.
This cruel act was probably the thrill-seeking pastime of bored, violence-inured kids. Nearby homeowners, and then all of Hampton Roads, were horrified and disgusted by the crime against these beautiful creatures.
One resident, in a TV interview, worried that neighborhood children might be the next targets. This is a very valid concern. Many of America's most despicable criminals tortured animals as children. Cannibal Jeffrey Dahmer was one.
Next to the newspaper story about the wounded ducks was another concerning a bird - a humorous piece about an emu which escaped from a breeding farm in Suffolk. A magnificent flightless bird that can run 40 mph, this doomed animal will eventually be killed and ground up into a trendy entree.
Where is the public outcry for this bird's life? Do those who worry about the darted ducks sit down to a meal of decapitated chicken or eviscerated cow? Are those who complain about the stench from a hog farm or the offal-polluted Pagan River in Smithfield more offended by their unpleasant proximity than by the mass killing of intelligent animals?
Nine billion breathing, feeling animals are slaughtered each year with only a tiny peep of protest from those few who value the life of the cow, pig and chicken as much as others value the dog or cat.
Thank God most civilized people are not numb to the heinous violence in our society. We weep for babies shot to death in their own homes. We are angered by cruelty inflicted upon individual animals.
But 9 billion animals? This is an incomprehensible number of lives. And the slaughterhouse is very, very far away from the bright lights, cheery music and polyurethane shrinkwrap of the supermarket.
We practice selective compassion toward animals and, sometimes, to our great shame, also toward our fellow human beings.
It would be monstrously insensitive, even blasphemous, to compare our treatment of factory-farmed animals with the treatment of human beings at the hands of the Nazis - unless you were one of those human beings.
Alex Hershaft is a Holocaust survivor and president of the Farm Animal Reform Movement. He has earned the right to denounce the abuse and slaughter we inflict upon billions of farm animals each year as another holocaust of monstrous proportions.
Every year FARM designates Oct. 2 as World Farm Animals Days to memorialize these innocent animals. In all 50 states and around the world, there will be candlelight vigils, literature distribution and peaceful demonstrations.
Oct. 2 is the birthday of Mahatma Gandhi, one of this century's great humanitarians and proponents of change through nonviolence. Gandhi was vegetarian, for he was raised in a strict Hindu home. Once, out of curiosity, he tried a piece of goat meat. His sleep that night was torn by nightmares of the goat screaming inside his body. From that time on, meat was not an issue; animal flesh is not human food. Gandhi became India's most noble human-rights activist, risking his life time and again for his people under oppressive British rule, and ultimately winning their freedom.
The vegetarian message here is powerful. It is hypocrisy for the voice that preaches nonviolence to consume violently obtained flesh food. The hand that works for peace cannot be stained with any blood.
Nobel Prize-winning author Isaac Bashevis Singer wrote: ``To be a vegetarian is to disagree - to disagree with the course of things today. Starvation, world hunger, cruelty, waste, wars - we must make a statement against these things. Vegetarianism is my statement.''
Violence - real, sublimated or vicarious - is a cancer on the human soul. Vegetarianism removes the hidden violence from one's life. Prayers of thanksgiving offered over food free from suffering and death are indeed universal blessings.
The observance of World Farm Animals Day today is a celebration of life, peace and freedom from persecution for every living creature. Join the celebration! Sit down to a feast chosen from the plant kingdom. Then offer yourself to someone in need of a helping hand or caring heart. You will draw great peace from this deep well of compassion. MEMO: Betty J. Atkinson is a Virginia Beach resident. by CNB