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Jain Education International
Jain Society of Greater Detroit
PRATISHTHA MAHOTSAV JUNE 27-JULY 6 1998
Youth Article: Animal Cruelty
"I'm Colorblind" - Bullfighting has always been a popular bloodsport in South America, and the countries of Spain and Portugal. In some countries, the statement is not only for fun, but for cultural purposes. Thousands of bulls and steers lose their lives in the bullrings from crashing into walls, maiming, or just from the stress of being colorblind. Bullfighting is estimated to be a $100,000,000 industry in the countries of South America, Spain, and Portugal. But does this justify the continued and persistent infliction of pain on an animal for the pleasure of the spectators?
BAM! BAM! YEOWW! - If you go to any gaming organization, you would see the dead faces of the animals that were
killed for their weight or popularity, all hung on plaques on the walls. You would know that many more hundreds of animals were killed and would be killed by getting hit by the shotgun or falling into traps or legbreaking snares. When you bring back a dead deer, all you would get out of that is fame, fortune, and money. What a grave injustice!
3. Fashion With Compassion: If you want to understand how deeply animal cruelty is embedded in our society and lifestyles, just peek behind the average bedroom closet door. The fur coat once grazed the backs of dozens of wild foxes. The leather shoes were once the living skin of a cow. That wool sweater once kept a sheep warm in winter. To put it simply, thousands
by Alap Shah
of generations after emerging from caves, most
of us still dress in animal skins!
The very presence of animal products in your closets puts the power to protect animal squarely in your individual hands. What you choose to put on in the morning is also a lifeand-death situation for many creatures in the animal kingdom.
Trapping and Facts About Fur:
An estimated 17 million raccoons, beavers, bobcats, lynx, coyotes, muskrats, nutria, and other animals are trapped each year in the United States for fur.
Animals that are caught in springloaded steel leg-hold traps (which are banned in many countries) suffer an average of 15 hours of pain before their lives are ended with a trapper's club.
Steel-jawed traps are so painful that many animals chew through their own limbs to escape. These crippled animals often die from infection, loss of blood, or starvation.
For every "target" fur-bearing animal trapped, two non-target animals are caught and killed. Trappers call these animals — such as dogs, cats, deer, and birds of prey - "trash animals."
It takes many more animals to make a fur coat than you may realize. To make a 40-inch coat, depending on the type, it takes 16 coyotes or 18 lynx or 60 mink, 45 opossums, 20 otters, 42 foxes, 40 raccoons, 50 sables, 8 seals, 50 muskrats, or 15 beavers. Add the number of "trash animals" caught, and the toll per count becomes truly appealing.
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