2007 and 2012 editions of “Wayne’s blog” affirm that HSUS president Wayne Pacelle has in truth heard of Thanksgiving.
Any cruelty to animals is worthy of denunciation. The larger and more conspicuous the cruelty, the more urgent the denunciation is.
Denouncing one of the largest animal sacrifices in the world at Thanksgiving 2014 would have been thoroughly appropriate for Humane Society of the U.S. and Humane Society International president Wayne Pacelle––if only he had done it.
Any cruelty to animals is worthy of denunciation. The larger and more conspicuous the cruelty, the more urgent the denunciation is.
But Pacelle said nothing. And he could not claim to have been unaware of it.
“There is no American holiday more associated with the use of an animal than Thanksgiving,” blogged Pacelle on November 22, 2007,” in one of only two substantial commentaries he has offered on the occasion in more than a decade as head of the world’s largest humane organization.
“In the United States, we consume 45 million turkeys on this holiday alone,” Pacelle continued then, “and the increasingly distressing part of the equation for me is that the vast majority of these turkeys are raised in intensive confinement on factory farms. More so, the USDA excludes turkeys and all other birds slaughtered for human consumption in the United States from legal protections under the Humane Methods of Slaughter Act…
“On Thanksgiving, we should not forget their circumstance”
“The domesticated turkeys raised now on factory farms bear scant resemblance to the wild turkeys inhabiting our forests,” Pacelle observed. “The wild birds are alert, fast-flying, and roost in trees. The domesticated turkeys are grossly obese, cannot run or fly, and cannot even reproduce on their own. Yet for all of our redesigns of their bodies, we have not been able to take away their ability to suffer. On Thanksgiving, we should not forget their circumstance.”
Pacelle, in his second notice of Thanksgiving, posted in 2012, repeated almost identical language.
At Thanksgiving 2014, however, Pacelle devoted his blog to a hyperbolic denunciation of the Gadhi Mai sacrificial festival in Nepal––a denunciation which would have been a breathtaking exercise in unmitigated hypocrisy even if any of the grossly exaggerated numbers Pacelle cited for it could be substantiated.
Turkeys are beheaded too
Pacelle righteously deplored that “nearly half a million animals could be hacked to death” at the Gadhi Mai festival this year. “Hacked to death” is an apt description of slaughter by decapitation––and this is exactly the fate of the 45 million turkeys on U.S. tables this very day, except that the turkeys are also shackled and hoisted upside down before their heads are hacked off.
Describing the Gadhi Mai scene, Pacelle extensively quoted a recent op-ed column for The Guardian authored by Humane Society International India representative N.G. Jayasimha, who wrote it before ever venturing within several hundred miles of the Gadhi Mai festival. In other words, Pacelle recycled second-hand campaign literature as his source.
![Volunteers, including Arun Prasanna (on the motorcycle) posed with guards at the Nepalese border with India. [Facebook]](https://i0.wp.com/www.animals24-7.org/wp-content/uploads/10404850_10152865200731257_5849167909612833677_n.jpg?resize=300%2C168)
Volunteers posed with guards at the Nepalese border with India. [Facebook]
As of November 21, 2014, volunteer Arun Prasanna posted to Facebook, “The temple has thus far amassed 33 cattle, the borders are sealed, there are reports that close to 2,000 cattle were seized at the borders. This year the numbers are definitely coming down.”
Two buffalo along a roadside
Pacelle claimed that “114 arrests have been made and more than 2,500 animals have been seized at the border, on their way to the festival,” but the HSI team at the scene apparently could send to Pacelle no visual documentation of the alleged marshaling of thousands of animals for slaughter more persuasive or dramatic than a photo of 40 buffalo grazing in a paddock and two buffalo being herded along a roadside––a scene which might be observed almost anywhere at almost any time in either Nepal or India.
Taken for HSUS/HSI by Kuni Takahashi/AP Images, these photos of buffalo purportedly being amassed for the Gadhi Mai sacrifice respectively show 40 buffalo in a paddock (enumerated by ANIMALS 24-7) and two buffalo grazing along a roadside, with no others in sight.
In truth, as ANIMALS 24-7 has extensively researched [see links below], no first hand documentation exists at this writing to demonstrate that more animals are killed at the Gadhi Mai festival, held once in five years, than are slaughtered in much the same manner at any of dozens of U.S. slaughterhouses each and every day, every working day of the year and sometimes on Sundays and holidays––except that the U.S. bloodbath goes on behind closed doors.
Dasain, Tyson
Further, no first hand documentation exists to demonstrate that the Gadhi Mai festival is any larger or bloodier than dozens of local sacrificial festivals held in India each year at Dasain, a holiday celebrated only a few weeks later. The only significant difference, if there is any, is that the animals killed at Dasain are mostly birds, and some goats, not buffalo.
Video from the 2009 Gadhi Mai festival shows circa 1,000 buffalo and fewer than a dozen other animals either being slaughtered or awaiting slaughter. Even if the video showed only half the buffalo at the scene, which is unlikely, since it pans over the entire sacrificial area to show open fields beyond, the total documented bovine slaughter in 2009 would have been half the total killed here in the U.S. by Tyson Inc. alone in an average day.
Neither does any documentation exist to support claims Pacelle echoed that the Gadhi Mai festival was of any noteworthy size at all before the short and bloody regime of King Gyanendra, the last hereditary monarch of Nepal, 2001-2008. Gyanendra promoted animal sacrifice as part of a last-ditch campaign to preserve his ruling authority.
Thanksgiving is bigger––and older
Thanksgiving, by contrast, has been an inescapably visible and thoroughly documented orgy of turkey slaughter with origins in 1621––more than a century before the most often claimed date for the origin of the Gadhi Mai sacrifices. Further, Thanksgiving has been verifiably celebrated annually since 1841, when Dr. Alexander Young successfully promoted it as a U.S. national holiday.
Excerpt from J.L.G. Ferris painting “The First Thanksgiving.”
Focusing on the Gadhi Mai sacrifices instead of Thanksgiving of course minimized the risk of backlash to Pacelle from HSUS/HSI donors who like to eat a Thanksgiving turkey before writing fat checks on Giving Tuesday, a few days later.
And grotesquely inflating the numbers of animals sacrificed at the Gadhi Mai festival sets HSUS/HSI and other advocacy organizations up to declare a great “victory” in the purported reductions of animals killed that can be claimed when verifiable numbers become available.
Any cruelty must be denounced
Again, any cruelty to animals is worthy of denunciation. The larger and more conspicuous the cruelty, the more urgent the denunciation is. But Americans will at Thanksgiving 2014 consume more animals in a day than the entire nation of Nepal consumes and kills in a year. And almost all the animals consumed in the U.S. will have been more cruelly raised, transported, and slaughtered than most of those killed in Nepal, where factory farming has yet to take hold and most slaughter is still done in connection with ritual sacrifice.
Beth & Merritt Clifton.
(Geoff Geiger photo)
Indeed, Americans consume around 100 times more animals each and every day than the entire nation of Nepal. To give credit where credit is due, Pacelle has said and done more in response to U.S. meat consumption and all of the cruelty associated with it than all of the other presidents of the largest U.S. humane organizations combined since 1868, when Henry Bergh founded the American SPCA. But this does not excuse amplifying false claims about a relatively small sacrificial event on the far side of the world, while maintaining a politically discreet silence about our own annual Thanksgiving massacre.
(See also: Supreme Court of India ruling covers tracks on Gadhi Mai sacrifice; Exposing the truth of the Gadhi Mai sacrificial slaughter; Books shed light on sacrifice in Nepal; and The origin of the Gadhi Mai sacrifice.
Please donate to support our work:
www.animals24-7.org/donate/
Related Posts
Feds bust cockfighting spurs in the mail but ignore mailings of gamecocks
98 alleged cockfighters busted; got only $50 fines & kept birds
“Kangaroos are not shoes” campaign kicks back against ghost of Pelé
Seven members of Alabama cockfighting family plead guilty to federal charges
“Big Lick” horses win in court. Can they get a break from Congress?
Why the Second Amendment does not protect either hunting animals or self-defense
That was some food for thought, Merritt. Thanks. Just one more thing that Pacelle seems to back pedal on. I’m really becoming scared of HSUS under Pacelle.
Why is it a matter of either or? There will always be something worse. This particular event is an open air slaughter of thousands of animals killed brutally by amateurs with machetes – and it sadly is for religious reasons only. Speaking out about this doesn’t mean that despicable treatment of other animals isn’t a consideration. Of course it is! This particular event takes place every five years while turkeys are cruelly slaughtered everyday of the year . We have to speak out about it all!
It isn’t “a matter of either or”; it is a matter of contextual accuracy and telling the truth. The practical difference to the animals between “amateurs with machetes” who occasionally sacrifice animals in Nepal (and eat them) and the short-term hires who kill turkeys for Thanksgiving in the U.S. is nil.
Sharing to social media. Business, as always, is big business, and most of the large “animal welfare” and “animal rights” organizations are just that. Just sayin’.
I’m SO tired of hearing animal advocates ragging on each other. This ad hominem attack on Pacelle is really over the top. It’s why I am an advocate who will not work with any animal group any more. In the words of Rodney King… Can’t we all just get along, dammit (emphasis added).
It is easy for us to denounce institutionalized animal abuse taking place in other countries while bypassing equal or surpassing animal abuses on the home front: Demanding an end to Japanese whaling, the Norwegian seal slaughter, dog consumption in Asia and so forth. Unfortunately the justified outrage against those atrocities, and demands that they be, not “regulated,” but stopped, seldom translates with equal vigor and passion to our own backyard, where the magnitude of animal abuse and suffering in “food” production, as this editorial points out, is as cruel as it gets, anywhere on earth.
The false idea being perpetrated is that staggering, heart-aching abuses of billions of sensitive birds, mammals and aquatic animals can be regulated and made “humane,” or close enough to soothe the consciences of those who prefer to be deluded. The ethical fantasy being perpetrated (“perpetrated” as in committing a felony) is that you can “care” about animals, yet still consume them and put them through hell – unless, for example, they are dogs in Korea, and then, inconsistently, it’s “Oh, how awful. THAT should be prohibited!” Oh, please.
Karen Davis, President of United Poultry Concerns http://www.upc-online.org
Wayne Pacelle, and the HSUS are nothing more than a clearing house, a money scam organization that now sides with the animal mass murder industries. Pacelle and the HSUS along with the mass murderers device the new public relations propaganda scheme to label mass murder “HUMANE” so that people can feel good about being cruel. There is no such thing as humane murder. What Pacelle and the HSUS have accomplished is nothing short of abominable, and have sunk lower than any organization could. They have betrayed the animals in the name of profits and dragged along with it other animal organizations who bought the “humane” propaganda.
I, along with many other animal advocates, am very deeply concerned about American Humane’s seal of approval for Butterball turkeys. This bizarre action no doubt caused more harm than Pacelle’s post, as I can honestly say I know no omnis who regularly read the HSUS blog, but nearly every one I know goes to the grocery store and purchases Butterball meat products.
http://www.motherjones.com/tom-philpott/2014/09/butterball-goes-humane-thanksgiving-really
As somebody who was in Gadhimai till the day before the sacrifice, I can assure you that I saw several thousand animals – buffaloes, goats, pigeons and chicken – and at least 200,000 people. And I do not exaggerate.
I am glad you have also written about the ritual slaughter of turkeys during Christmas. Americans must start a campaign against this terrible practice, and stop it.
Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary proof. To claim that 200,000 people are present when an aerial photo shows fewer than 1,000, with the possibility of perhaps another 1,000 remaining behind in the village, is simply not credible. Similarly, no documentation from any year of the Gadhi Mai festival shows “several thousand” animals unless one counts free-flying pigeons. The highest count produced by anyone viewing the 2009 video at Asia for Animals 2014 was 1,300; the average was about 1,000.
I wonder if Animals 24-7 might be interested in investigating a branch of the HSUS called the “Humane Society of Hong Kong, Ltd.” It has been listed on the HSUS tax returns (alongside other “related organizations”) for a decade or more. The Humane Society of Hong Kong, Ltd is right there on HSUS’s new 2013 IRS 990 tax form. It’s primary purpose is listed as animal welfare and the controlling entity is HSUS. Yet it appears to exist only on paper.
Unlike the very active and legitimate Hong Kong SPCA, I cannot find a single piece of evidence regarding even a smidgen of animal protection work ever conducted by this Humane Society of Hong Kong Ltd. Searching by address, I could only find a money processing center run by one of HSUS”s two giant direct mail mills.
We all know how much Wayne Pacelle cares about “all animals.” I have to wonder what does he know about his own Hong Kong office? How many HSUS/HSI people work there? When did Pacelle last visit? If the operation is fraudulent, I’m sure Wayne will do whatever it takes to track down the perpetrators and bring them to justice.
If you can investigate this and report back, I would be happy to send a generous holiday donation.
The existence of the Humane Society of Hong Kong, Ltd., for which no financial accountability information appears to be available, was first brought to my attention in February 2001 by Kevin Sinclair, a reporter and columnist for the South China Morning Post. Sinclair thought something was odd about it after taking a tearful call from a member of the Hong Kong Kennel Club who had just received a gruesome slick mailing about dog-eating and dog-skinning in China. All would know better, Sinclair surmised, than to send out a mailing which from the description he heard seemed to stigmatize Asians in general, rather than specifically targeting the fewer than 5% who eat dogs. Seeking an explanation, and learning that the well-established Hong Kong SPCA knew nothing about the mailing, Sinclair visited the Humane Society of Hong Kong in person. “I found an entire floor under the logo ‘Charities Limited,’ Sinclair told me. “There were at least eight charities listed. I spoke to the woman who appeared to be in charge, a Mrs. Ho. ‘We just send out letters and collect the money,’ she said. There were eight computer work stations and three other staff, all busy. There were large stacks of receipts and money machine printouts. They could show me no legal documents. There was nobody in charge. The only person they could refer me to was the chair in Australia, a woman named Verna Simpson. She visited Hong Kong once to set up this office, last fall. It seems all money is banked and sent to her. They are a branch of the Humane Society of the U.S.
“The entire situation is most unsatisfactory,” Sinclair said. “How much money is collected in Hong Kong? Can’t say. What happens to the money? Can’t say. Where are the dogs and cats the promotional material says are being rescued? Can’t say. Where were the photos taken of men cutting up dead dogs? Can’t say.”
The Humane Society of Hong Kong was formed on March 20, 2000, Sinclair continued after another day of investigation. The three directors were then-HSUS president Paul Irwin, then-HSUS direct mail consultant David Ganz, and Verna Simpson. Simpson was also listed as marketing director of the Humane Society International office in Australia. The Society had no staff in Hong Kong, as the mailing operation appeared to be part of a firm called Datatrade, a subsidiary of the direct mail empire built by HSUS mailing subcontractor Phil Sheats.
Sinclair also had questions for the Hong Kong tax authorities, pointing out that “Under (d) of Section 88 of the Inland Revenue Ordinance, donations are only considered charitable as long as they are of benefit to the Hong Kong Community. This, as far as I can establish, is not the case with the Humane Society of Hong Kong,” Sinclair told me.
Concluded Sinclair, “The feeling among genuine animal lovers in Hong Kong is that we have severe needs here, and even more so on the mainland, and money raised here should be spent here, rather than disappearing into a black hole abroad.”
The Humane Society of Hong Kong Ltd. since then has kept a very low profile. The Humane Society of the U.S. subsidiary Humane Society International has funded a variety of activities in China, but the Humane Society of Hong Kong Ltd. does not appear to have been credited with an active role in campaigning, and I cannot recall encountering anyone at the Asia for Animals conferences, even those held in Hong Kong and China, who identified himself/herself as a Humane Society of Hong Kong Ltd. representative.
The Humane Society of the U.S. has retained the incorporated status of many other apparently inactive affiliates and subsidiaries, some of them –– such as the Humane Society of the U.S. California Inc. –– formed as long ago as 1959. Maintaining the inactive incorporations helps to prevent others from using the same or similar names, and ensures the receipt of any bequests which may have been made to those organizations.