Let's take a look at the main ingredients of the Easter festival: there are many colourful chickens and chocolate eggs, chocolate bunnies, cute chicks and rabbits and first of all real hen eggs. Everybody eats colour or white eggs, very often not knowing where they come from, how the hen are living.

As an Easter menu, the discount provider show delicious filleted lamb racks, based on the old custom of the Easter lamb. This had originally according to Jewish faith to be sacrificed to God on the Passover.  Later, the faithful themselves may eat it, or better they had to eat it themselves.

Give us our daily meat and egg today? The churches have supported the consumption of meat

The churches have always cherished and endorsed the meat eating. To what extent this can be said of Jesus and the original Christians is rightly disputed and is not to be discussed here. But surely even before Jesus' time, there were vegetarians in the ancient world for animal ethic and religious reasons. The philosopher and mathematician Pythagoras is the father of European vegetarianism. And there have always been vegetarians as a conviction in all the centuries everywhere in the world, as we know from the sayings of various famous historical personalities such as Laotse, Leonardo da Vinci, the poet Horaz, the philosopher Voltaire or the author Emile Zola or Indian Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore and many more.  They all detested the killing and eating of animal. For a lot of intellectual people it was never an acceptable matter.

The churches with their clear attitude to the sacrifice of animals and the slaughter of animals, were not innocent in the fact that meat consumption is omnipresent in the Christianized hemisphere and has therefore rarely been questioned.

Today, in the era of factory farming a particularly ghastly image offers to us. It is no longer just about killing the animals for eating and having clothes, it is about the degradation of the animals to a pure production factor in a highly rationalized animal industry. It takes only so much consideration to the animals, as it is necessary for the profitable sale and that is nearly nothing. It means millions and billions times daily cruelty to animals for slaughter, accepted by ca. 90 % of the people of a state, even if more an more people reject factory farming.

Massive violations of animal rights and law in Europe, in Germany, everywhere

The practices of the animal industry are now coming to light with the increasingly common undercover recordings and films about the previously tabooed abuses in the meat industry. Some of these are also set in the staph blogs. But also the established media are increasingly reporting on the unscrupulous practices of the animal industry and are thus raising them to the public's awareness. And the topic is finally on the agenda of the policy with first measures.

For many practices, there are clear violations of the theory of animal rights, which are only rarely implemented. It’s written: "No animal may be added without reasonable ground pain, suffering or damage." That sounds good, but the reality for slaughter animals looks very different, even if nowadays there are some slaughter houses use warm lights and quiet music before they become killed. It’s sadistic as well. The reason for this investment are not the animals themselves, but the customers, who want to eat unstressed animals, which taste better and a good conscience.

The mass killing of the male chicks - when will it finally stop?

That investment is not for the animals first is shown at the example of the male chicken killing.

Every year – only in Germany - over 45 million male chicks are killed at their first day, lively by gas or in a shredder machine. That's absolutly cruel.  These male chickens are from the breeding of laying hens trimmed on eggs. These male chicks do not count on the animal industry and are therefore immediately destroyed. The coalition agreement of the new government in Germany provides that the killing of day-old chicks should be completed stopped by 2020. But they have been trying this for years. A new technique that will determine the sex of the chicks still in the egg, is not yet available. And even then, the mass production of eggs remains unacceptable for animal ethical reasons.

Unfortunately, it is not so much better in the organic chicken industry. The project from the eco-industry "My brother may live" raise the male chickens as roast chicken. This is otherwise only the case for the chickens bred for meat consumption from the turbo mast. They need three times as long as they are ready for slaughter like the so-called turbo chickens. Such a small eco-tap generally also has more freedom of movement than the brothers and sisters from the conventional chicken mast. But we should know that the life of a turbo chick ends after 4-6 weeks and these bio male chicken live around 4 month. Chicken have a normal life expectancy for many years.

An animal suffering free Easter is easy today

No, that is not the right food, and not at Easter. If you want to celebrate an animal-friendly Easter, you can become creative and take egg-shaped fruit and vegetable  or bake egg-shaped creations or just take healthy Easter sweeti. But in fact there are nowadays little tomatoes, olives, melons or kiwi and in the full costumes of our shops can be discovered more. All this is also beautifully colorful, tastes and is also very healthy. And of course there are also these yummy sweet choco eggs. But please take vegan ones, with soy milk. They are increasingly available in stores.

Karin Jansen

back to part 1: Good Friday and Easter - An Essay

staph 4 YOU - You 4 staph

                    Read more

                    Mission ETick  (German language)

Merken

Merken

Merken

Merken

Merken

Merken