Ashamed to be human

Thank you for starting this thread Nightowl and raiding awareness of this senseless cruelty. I have signed the petition and shared with friends on Facebook.

Slaughtering turkeys and other animals for meat under humane conditions is what goes on all round the world all year. Unless we are vegetarians then we have to accept that.

The world is a cruel place - you only have to watch any wildlife programme to see that it is all about eat or be eaten - but we have moved on in that most civilized nations have rules about how animals are raised for meat and how they are slaughtered. We may not agree with all those rules and feel things could still be done better, but at least we are moving in the direction of concern for animal welfare and there are legal safeguards and sanctions.

We are carnivores by nature - you only have to look at our teeth. It was not our idea - it is just how the world is.

Having said that, I eat only a little meat and then only poultry and fish in the main. I think it is an expensive and planet-destroying way of obtaining protein.

It is up to gransnet what they deem acceptable, and what they deem not.

I do not feel remotely comfortable in contributing to this particular thread any further.

18 million turkeys slaughtered in the UK every year, 10 million for the Christmas market.

Good to hear that the meat is eaten and the hide used. Thank you for finding that out.

Also thanks to GNHQ for your decision.

I have been reading to find out if the meat is eaten, and apparently it is. The hides are also sold and used.
Another interesting fact I found is that only Denmark and Holland in Europe have banned ritualistic slaughter.

And thank you GNHQ for your response, which is that this is a reasonable thread and you see no reason to delete it or any comments.

I hope the thread will die a peaceful death.

Except thank you Mishap and others for defending this as a legitimate thread, whatever the different views might be.

www.ciwf.org.uk/news/2014/10/joanna-lumley-nepal-say-no-to-mass-animal-sacrifice/

Judge for yourselves. Ignore the fact that Joanna Lumley is involved and concentrate on the message from Suraya Upadhaya from the Nepalese Hindu Forum in the UK. Or is he also racist? Is the organisation CWF racist as well?

I have nothing else to say until we hear from GNHQ.

Expressing the view that something is wrong does not mean that other things are not also wrong petallus. The one does not follow from the other, nor negate the other. More than one thing can be wrong!

I condemn this waste of food in Nepal; and also the cruel practices that you are telling us take place in Europe.

Sorry that last comment was to soontobe not to petallus

I don't disagree that many practices in the west are unspeakable petallus. As I said earlier, where does that leave us? Are we not to speak out against practices in other countries/ cultures because we are not perfect either.

I have reported my own thread to add to soontobe's reporting of it so no doubt we will get a view from there.

Take issue with anything I have said, but please don't accuse me of racism. That leaves a very nasty taste.

I looked at the link. Am I missing something? How is it that this wholesale slaughter of animals in Napal is 'unspeakable' and the hugely cruel practices and widespread slaughter of animals in Europe is not?

This thread is not anti Hindu soontobe and I'm sorry you think it is. No doubt GNHQ will decide. This practice is something that some Hindus do in a very specific region of Nepal. Most Hindus (I believe) do not support the practice and do not support blood sacrifice and would not be at all offended by the thread. Indeed, Hinduism is often quoted as one of the most peaceful of religions, alongside Buddhism. Many Hindus are vegetarian for religious reasons. I have nothing but respect for that and for the Hindus I have known, vegetarian or otherwise. However I cannot agree that we must not speak out against unspeakable things done in the name of religion. There have been many such threads on gransnet and I am not aware that any has been reported before

We cannot go through life never being judgemental - sometimes it is appropriate. Not everything can be condoned; there are issues of right and wrong. Is it racist to say that Germany was wrong to persecute and exterminate minorities?

Philosophers have long debated where the line should be drawn and sought a definition of objective right and wrong - if we say that all religious practices are fine and we are not allowed to express a negative view, then how, for instance do we stop little girls being mutilated?

There is a difference between denigrating a group for who they are (that is racism) and challenging practices that we find unacceptable (that is legitimate debate). For example, it is fundamentally wrong to condemn someone for their racial origin (e.g.being a Jew) but it is fine to say that there are some practices that you find objectionable (e.g. circumcision). That is not a racist statement, it is a legitimate expression of distaste for an action that you find unacceptable.

There is no certainty about what is right and wrong - but there are different views on this, and it is fine to express them.

I make no apology for stating that I find the waste of food involved in the OP wasteful and unacceptable.

This thread is not anti-Hindu, soontobe It is about a specific thing that has been done by Hindus.

Many Hindu widows in India were expected to committ suttee - to throw themselves onto their husband's funeral pyre and burn to death with him. Was it anti-Hindu to abhor that expectation and practice?

There's something about Western nations and their conviction that they are entitled to educate, persuade, coerce, other 'lesser' cultures into seeing the error of their ways.

Reminds me of early missionaries going over to Africa and making people cover their sinful nakedness and convert to Christianity

It is indeed their belief - but no-one is obliged to agree with it and we are free to say so.

Rochdale was wrong; slaughtering thousands of animals and wasting the food produced is also wrong. I condemn both.

I'm not so sure about free speech.

Surely there are laws about, for instance, making anti-Semitic comments, anti gay comments, racist comments, sexism, to name but a few.

How outraged are we when UKIP members come out with one of their remarks?

I am uncomfortable with judgemental comments being made about other people's beliefs and cultural practices and with such absolute certainty.

We dont have free speech. That is just a myth.
We do not have a moral right to be so disrespectful to people of other religions to ours.
It is not a loving thing to do.

Rochdale was very wrong. The people in Nepal are following their religion. We may not agree with it, but it is their beliefs.

Up to gransnet to decide.

I want to say more, but I have to go out.

I feel the same. I've been following the activities of Sea Shepherd in Japan this year via Facebook. The slaughter of dolphins and whales and capturing some for a life of captivity. It's awful, they slaughter these sensitive mammals in front of each other and they dump the babies back at sea so they don't get in the way of the fishermen's quota. It's just horrible.

I think as intelligent and powerful beings, we have a moral duty to try to stop suffering around the world. We are raping and pillaging the planet, one way or another, I think that matters. It's not the same as trying to destroy other cultures, but it is trying to improve the general lot of everyone. And labels like racism just distract from trying to interact with others on some level.

I mean, what about the Taliban attacking health workers in Afghanistan because they think polio vaccinations are evil and Western and so children are getting polio again for the first time in decades. What should we do, go 'oh it's their culture'?

Free speech? What has happened to that? I thought that was what people fought for in the last two world wars.

There are many Hindus who will read this thread and agree with many of the views expressed; and there are many who won't - they are free to hold and express that view, just as we are to express ours. It is called living in a democracy.

There is nothing we can do to stop people behaving in this way - but we are rightly allowed to express our abhorrence. I would not like to live in a country where we could not do so.

These sort of attempts to bar free speech contributed to the widespread child abuse in Rochdale, as no-one dared speak out - I hope we have learned the lesson from that.

Good luck with that, soontobe.
This is a perfectly legitimate thread.

I hope no Hindus happen to read this thread. I have reported it. Sorry, but I think that this is beyond the pale.

I think we get a bit too squeamish about being PC, non-racist etc. Sometimes something is just plain wrong and indefensible. This is one of them. It is OK to say so.

Should we condone FGM or black magic practices that result in child abuse because we are afraid to appear racist? No - we should declare these practices as being fundamentally wrong.

I am not an animal rights person, or a vegetarian, but the waste of meat when there are people starving is unacceptable.

I am not telling these people how to live their lives, I am just saying that in my opinion this is wrong.

Bags is quite right that education is the key to eliminating superstition.