Jerusalem - Israel will ban the force-feeding of geese as of late January
after parliamentary approval of a new law under heavy pressure from animal
rights campaigners.
The law was passed on Monday despite government fears
that it could ruin Israel's standing as one of the world's largest exporters of
foie gras, a pate made from goose liver.
In August 2003, the supreme
court ordered a blanket ban on force-feeding but granted producers of foie gras
a year-and-a-half delay.
A subsequent request from the agriculture
ministry for an additional two-month grace period was turned down by
MPs.
Agriculture ministry director general, Yossi Ishay, has said the law
will ruin an important sector of Israeli agriculture.
The Jewish state is
the world's fourth largest exporter of foie gras Nan industry worth
$16,5-million (about R100-million) a year which employs 500 people in Israel. -
Sapa-AFP
http://www.jewishworldreview.com | With this first column of 2005, I
inaugurate a periodic series of columns devoted to explaining and making the
case for what are called Judeo-Christian values.
There is an epic battle taking place in the world over what value system
humanity will embrace. There are essentially three competitors: European
secularism, American Judeo-Christianity and Islam. I have described this battle
in previous columns.
Now, it is time to make the case for Judeo-Christian, specifically
biblical, values. I believe they are the finest set of values to guide the lives
of both individuals and societies. Unfortunately, they are rarely rationally
explained — even among Jewish and Christian believers, let alone
to nonbelievers and members of other faiths.
So this is the beginning of an admittedly ambitious project. Vast numbers
of people are profoundly disoriented as to what is good and what is bad. Just to
give one example: Take the moral confusion over the comparative worth of human
and animal life.
The majority of American students I have asked since 1970 whether they
would save their dog or a stranger have voted against the stranger.
A Tucson, Ariz., woman in late 2004 sent firefighters into her burning
home telling them that her three babies were inside. The babies for whom the
firemen risked their lives were the woman's three cats.
The best known animal rights organization, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), funded by the best educated in our society, has launched an international campaign titled "Holocaust on your plate," which equates the barbecuing of millions of chickens with the cremating of millions of Jews in the Holocaust. To PETA and its supporters, there is no difference between chicken life and human life.
Only a very morally confused age could produce so many people who do not
recognize the immeasurable distance between human and animal worth. We live in
that age.
We do in large measure because values based on G-d and the Bible have
been replaced by secular values. The result was predicted by the British thinker
G.K. Chesterton at the turn of the 20th century: "When people stop believing in
G-d, they don't believe in nothing — they believe in anything."
Yes, the moral record of Christian Europe is a mixed one —
especially vis a vis its one continuous religious minority — Jews.
And one has to be quite naive to believe that belief in G-d and the Bible
guarantees moral clarity, let alone moral behavior.
But Chesterton was right. The collapse of Christianity in Europe led to
the horrors of Nazism and Communism. And to the moral confusions of the present
— such as the moral equation of the free United States with the
totalitarian Soviet Union, or of life-loving Israel with its death-loving
enemies.
The oft cited charge that religion has led to more wars and evil than
anything else is a widely believed lie. Secular successors to Christianity have
slaughtered and enslaved more people than all religions in history (though
significant elements within a non-Judeo-Christian religion, Islam, slaughter and
enslave today, and if not stopped in Sudan and elsewhere could match Nazism or
Communism).
In fact, it was a secular Jew, the great German Jewish poet Heinrich
Heine, who understood that despite its anti-Semitism and other moral failings,
Christianity in Europe prevented the wholesale slaughter of human beings that
became routine with Christianity's demise. In 1834, 99 years before Hitler and
the Nazis rose to power, Heine warned:
"A drama will be enacted in Germany compared to which the French
Revolution will seem harmless and carefree. Christianity restrained the martial
ardor for a time but it did not destroy it; once the restraining talisman [the
cross] is shattered, savagery will rise again. . . . "
What is needed today is a rationally and morally persuasive case for
embracing the values that come from the Bible. This case must be more compelling
than the one made for anti-biblical values that is presented throughout the
Western world's secular educational institutions and media (news media, film and
television).
That is what I intend to do. Events in the news will compel columns on
those events, but I do not believe that anything I can do with my life can match
the importance of making the case for guiding one's life and one's society by
the values of the Bible. As a Jew, by "biblical" I am referring to the
Tanach, but this should pose no problem to Christian readers, since this
is the first part of their Bible as well. Indeed, as the greatest Jewish
thinker, Maimonides, pointed out over 800 years ago, it is primarily Christians
who have spread knowledge of the Jews' Bible to the human race.
I not only welcome responses, I value them — equally from
those who agree and those who disagree.
Stay tuned.
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in Washington and in the media consider "must reading." Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
JWR contributor Dennis
Prager hosts a national daily radio show based in Los Angeles. He the author of,
most recently, "Happiness is a Serious Problem". Click here
to comment on this column.
Social workers in Scotland recently rescued a pet monkey from the filthy, drug-infested apartment of a couple of heroin addicts. Contacting an animal-welfare group, the social workers took great pains to make sure the animal was removed from the squalid cesspool of a home.
But the social workers neglected to do anything about the little girl living with the couple.
The 5-year-old's fingernails had not been cut for more than a year, she was covered in bed sores, lying in human waste and wearing a plaster cast on her broken leg that should have been removed 10 months earlier. When doctors eventually removed the cast from the girl, whose leg has been permanently scarred, they found spoons, a fork, and a pen she had used to try to scratch her ulcers.
A judge rebuked the social workers, noting incredulously that they had visited the couple's house 18 times and had gone inside four times, but had failed to take note of or do anything about the poor girl's plight.
Hang on to that picture for a minute.
PETA, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, is the largest animal-rights organization on the planet, boasting 600,000 members.
The group has an impressive record of getting business, industry and government to be kinder to animals. With the central theme of preventing cruelty to animals, the group has waged a long and successful campaign against research, scientific and product testing involving animals.
To demonstrate its corporate citizenship in promoting alternative methods of testing, PETA has made grants totaling $300,000 to two research firms "to assist in the validation of non-animal test methods to replace existing animal tests." What sort of non-animal testing? How about human embryos?
As reported in WorldNetDaily, although one of the two firms funded by PETA has denied using human embryos for their testing, the other has not. Human babies, you see, are not as important as rats.
Now the National Institutes of Health has drafted new guidelines for "human embryonic stem cell research" that will make it easier than ever for human embryos to be used as mere "tissue" for research.
The general secretary of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, Rev. Msgr. Dennis N. Schnurr, in his letter to the NIH, charges that "the policy of the new NIH guidelines is that human embryos outside the womb may be exploited and killed as nothing more than 'tissue.' In short," he says, "live human embryos are dismissed as mere 'tissue' to be destroyed for useful cells."
"Under this policy," concludes Schnurr, "far from being treated as a human subject, the human embryo effectively ranks lower in status than a laboratory animal."
Humans lower than animals? Is there a pattern developing here?
I always thought PETA just wanted to put a stop to homeless dogs' being burned alive and similar horror stories, as their home page indicates. But moving beyond the shiny exterior with its heart-wrenching animal-abuse stories designed to appeal to large numbers of people and attract donations, I find this:
"For kids who want to eat their veggies and not their friends," PETA draws children into campaigns to "Save the Chickens," and to "Save the Pigs."
What about "Save the Babies"? I couldn't find that campaign. Can someone send me the link?
Wait, maybe this is it, on one of PETA.com's many niche marketing spin-off sites called Jesusveg.com. (That's the one for Christians, there's also IslamicConcern.com for Muslims.)
By the way, the statement "Jesus was a vegetarian" is a lie. The Bible, which I presume is the source of PETA's information about Jesus, clearly states that Jesus ate fish, even after his resurrection.
But I digress. In "Jesus was a vegetarian," PETA poses to itself one of the key questions that people ask of the organization, and of animal rights activists in general:
"Why don't you focus your attention on abortion or child abuse? Why do you care about animals?"
PETA's answer, addressed specifically to Christian, pro-lifer types:
"... Those who are particularly adamant on the abortion issue should also consider the issue of vegetarianism, as it requires no additional effort and lends the credibility of personal action to their statements about being 'pro-life.'
"... With the issue of abortion, few of us will ever have to make this choice, and no one can make this choice for someone else, however much some people might wish to.
"But there is one area where the solution is simple: the issue of animal abuse on factory farms. Each and every one of us can simply choose not to be animal abusers by becoming a vegetarian."
Okay, let's get this straight. No one has the right to tell another person that it's wrong to kill the living, breathing, pain-feeling human baby living inside its mother. That's her business alone if she wants to kill it, so butt out.
But, it's everyone's duty and moral responsibility to stop the killing of chickens, pigs and fish everywhere.
There's more: "If we purport to be 'pro-life,' yet we choose to support violence, misery, and death every time we sit down to eat, what does that say about our convictions? For a simple palate preference, we have become 'pro-death,' we are paying for cruelty to animals. The only legitimate Christian or 'pro-life' choice is vegetarianism."
What are we dealing with here? Just some wacky, lovable, slightly-off-base critter-loving friends of animals?
Let's take a deeper look.
A human being -- from the moment of its conception, and as the delicate and ethereal fabric grows with its tiny, perfectly formed fingers and toes, little heartbeats, little lips, little ears, shrouded peacefully in its mother's womb -- is undoubtedly the crowning glory of creation.
"Created in His image," the human baby at whatever stage is, simply, sacred. So of course, good-natured, decent pro-lifers are always scratching their heads and asking the animal-rights crowd, "Why don't you folks care about the aborted babies?"
Take a really good look at PETA's response. Look at the tortured reasoning. Notice the unfriendly tone, the disdainful use of quotes around the phrase "pro-life." Do these seem like the words of an organization that really cares about aborting humans?
No. But they're hoping you won't notice. They're hoping you'll think, "Oh well, PETA just carved out this little niche of saving dogs and cats and chickens and pigs, but they really care about human babies too."
Wrong.
The most PETA can grudgingly offer up in support of human life is, "Those who are particularly adamant on the abortion issue should also consider the issue of vegetarianism, as it ... lends the credibility of personal action to their statements about being 'pro-life.'"
Pitiful. By the way, PETA's core argument is the prevention of needless suffering to all life. Do they think unborn babies do not suffer? The research - all of it - says that early on, human beings have a nervous system and feel real pain. Their nerves and pain receptor cells don't suddenly switch on the moment they exit their mother's womb. They feel the abortionist's scalpel, they feel the forceps, the suction devices, skull crushers and other torture implements used in the various barbaric rituals of infant sacrifice that we call abortion. If PETA really cared about human life, it would have answered the question something like this: "Although abortion is the worst travesty, the greatest injustice, and the most egregious cause of needless suffering on the planet today, we at PETA have chosen to come to the defense of animals, since not many people have the will or the means to do so. But we know our mission pales into nothingness next to the horrendous ongoing tragedy of tens of millions of innocent human babies killed painfully, sometimes meeting excruciating deaths, every year while in their mother's wombs. We salute our brothers and sisters in the pro-life movement for their dedication and commitment to end this needless suffering."
Sorry, it's just a nice dream. The reality is that you pro-lifers are the enemy of the radical animal-rights crowd. Because you, through your standing up for the little divine spark in God's most perfect and prized creation, are championing the very reality - namely, the existence of the soul in human beings -- that they want to forget. The real message of the radical animal rights movement is that people are only animals - and not very good ones at that.
Elevating animals up to the level of human beings -- as actor Steven Segal, one of PETA's celebrity advocates, puts it, "We have to view all life as equal" -- is a round about way of saying that human beings are no more than animals and therefore have no souls.
Why would anyone deny that human beings have a soul, you might ask. Why would that notion that we have a divine spark within us be repugnant? After all, whatever goodness we humans can muster, whatever kindness and consideration we have for each other, is based on the fact that we know we are dealing with another soul. If we are faithful to our spouse, honorable in business, truthful to each other, willing to sacrifice for our children - whatever we consider to be virtuous and noble is tied up in this conviction that we are more than animals, that we are spiritual beings also, esteemed by God.
For many, there is a great comfort and "freedom" in believing that there is no soul, because if there is no soul, there is no God, no divine judgment, no accountability -- you get the picture. We're animals, so we act like animals, we do what animals do. They eat each other, mate in the street, run around naked - kind of like the '60s again, with "sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll."
The radical animal rights folks are exactly like the multiculturalists. Do you think the multiculturalists really care about Eskimo music or how the Ubangis make their lips as big as pancakes? Do they really care that much about cultures that worship rats, cows and sex organs? No, their interest is not really in elevating other cultures, nor in celebrating diversity.
Their interest is in tearing down Western civilization, in denying God, in denying the immortal soul of man -- denying that we will be judged one day by One greater than us.
In the same way, the animal rights radicals don't really love animals. They don't even know the meaning of the word love. They just want to be their own gods. And the way you become your own god in this life is to deny the real One.
Animal-rights radicals loathe the idea of man having an immortal soul, of his being superior to the animals, because if we are superior to animals it is because we have a soul, and that reality makes us subservient to something greater than ourselves. And, as I said, some people just want to be their own god.
Besides, many people just don't get along with other people. After all, people give you a hard time, they can criticize you, they can even tell you the truth when you don't want to hear it. Animals never do that.
Related stories:
New U.S. guidelines on embryo tests
Sacrificing humans to save animals?
See Joseph Farah's column:
The return of Dr.
Mengele
See John Doggett's column:
Babies more
important than stray cats