peta – The Bach

Dear Jwala & Ashwini,

I have no intention to take the shine away from the beautiful medals and trophies you earned. I congratulate even to those which you did not win but tried your best. You certainly deserve all the accolades and applauses showed on you. You have inspired thousands of girls pan-India to take up this game and excel in it. Kudos. Well done.

While that, I see you both are brand ambassadors of Peta. That is cool, another feather on your cap. [See what I did there? Feathers? and you play Badminton. No? Okay]. Anyways, I wrote this post with a single intention of calling out your hypocrisy, which you obviously did not sense while joining the Peta.

Ashwini Ponnappa Slams Circus Animal Abuse – Peta India

Before I forget, let me bring this image up. I can see you Jwala ‘bleeding’ as part of your Campaign against Cockfighting! Just Wow! Thanks to you, those villagers (all seven of them) can now have a melodramatic moral epiphany and stop betting on those poor birds. They will eat Daal-fry tonight, instead of those chicken kababs.

Jwala Gutta ‘Bleeds’ in Campaign Against Cockfighting – Peta India

Also, personally, Badminton is probably the only sport I managed to play reasonably well. Now that I learned more about it, I must give it up. In m defense, I had no clue how the Shuttlecock is manufactured all this while. However, you should have known this. You had chosen Badminton as your bread and butter. It is expected of you to be a little more curious about your props than me.

For documentation purpose, let them list all the issues for you.

The Shuttlecock is made from plucked feathers of live ducks and geese. While this process the birds are not killed, not stunned, they remain alive. The poachers and farmers hold the bird down by the neck and pluck a fistful of feathers by force.
They are live birds, and obviously, they will bleed, but not to death. They survive bleeding through the day, only to make next Shuttlecock by growing replacement feathers.
There is science behind the selection of feathers. Only the ones with the right weight and correct angles make the cut (pun?). This also means the most feathers plucked are going to be discarded.

16 feathers in FEATHER Shuttlecock used in Badminton. (Feathers are plucked from ducks , geese and sometimes hens pic.twitter.com/OEPgIJHlPV
— Amol Singh (@0731Amol) April 28, 2015

There are few other non-animal-torture related aspects which also begs for your attention.

India cannot supply the feathers to all the 50k+ shuttlecocks it produces annually. So obviously it comes from Bangladesh as smuggled. They escape tax obligation from either of countries.
Also, these plucking factories are known to misuse children. There are reports on how they are being used to pluck or cut the feathers for 10-12 hours earning not more than 50 Rs.
Reports say one-fifth of children in Rajapur, Uluberia, Howrah in West Bengal are employed to manufacture these. They are under the age of 10, do not go to school, undergo frequent industrial accidents. Read through the report.

Did you get it now ? The hypocrisy in it ? When can I see your Campaign against these, please ? When can we expect you shout for ethical treatment animals of your own game?

Thanks, Not a fan. – The Bach

There is some classification I made about food habits, keeping vegetarians in mind, with some information available over net. Here they are.

Fruitarians. – These people eat fruits, seeds and raw roots (sweet potatoes etc). The Hindu (including Buddhist and Janis monks) we heard, meditating in Himalayas and jungles are supposed to be eating only these. This category need not to be included, because I feel such people don’t exist now or did not exist.
Raw/living foodists Eat major part of the food uncooked, or just warmed. (Again this category wouldn’t have existed, if doctors dint ask them to do.
Brahmins – One of the loosing definitions in India. There is a special reason I categorized them separately, instead of naming them in vegetarians. They in addition to not eating meat, they also don’t eat onions (for the reason of, the organic fertilizers used in these farms are human wastes), papaya, chilly (since these are of Indian origin), sugar (since animal product is used to polish jagarry), boiled rice (since it is boiled twice) thus so many concepts. Some of them may be valid but most of them are outdated. For example. If sugar is not accepted, the leather products also shouldn’t get used. The food habits are driven by religious rules, not ethics. Dairy products are always OK.
Vegans. This is one of the concepts recently getting very popular in west. They don’t consume anything, which has something to do with animal. Along with not consuming meat, egg and dairy products, they don’t buy leather, wool, silk, honey etc. Ethics keeps these people on. If religiously some people fall into this category they are Jain and Buddhist monks.

Current Worldwide Annual Meat Consumption per capita

source

Lacto vegetarians – those who don’t consume any meat but OK with dairy products. Vegetarians, what is referred in India (by caste and religions) are these. The argument is, milk is not a part of animal body and also they don’t get hurt, and the card runs here is – are all mammals are non-vegetarians? They do drink milk of its mother.
Lacto ovo vegetarians – Those who eat egg along with dairy products, but no meat. The argument is “egg is not animal, it dint born”, and the card played is – egg produced is not natural, these eggs don’t go and become chicken
Pesco – vegetarians (eat fish, no other meat), Pollo – vegetarians (eat no beef, but do eat poultry.) and all the possible combinations and permutations of above four might add up to… may be ten different food habits. However I don’t consider these as categories, since they are not backed by any strong arguments or ethics. Its just taste and allergies made them have those combinations. They are simply NOT vegetarians
Religious – NON – Vegetarians: these people give religious reasons to “not ” to eat some particular kind of meat. (Beef for Hindus, pig in Islam). However as an atheist, this concept does not make any since to me.
Non – vegetarians – anyone who dint restrict themselves to eat anything. Nice concept, but please spare Tom and Jerry.
Cannibals – You know them, yes Tax collectors.