Nauseating Hypocrisy
By Manny Piñol
PhilBoxing.com
Thu, 09 Jun 2011
Many years ago, a British animal rights group castigated the Igorots of the Philippines for slaughtering dogs as part of their cultural cuisine saying this was cruelty to animals.
An Igorot intellectual (and mind you these are a very educated and highly-learned people) gave that group a verbal spanking for its comeuppance when he asked: "We slaughter dogs for meat because it is part of our culture but you kill foxes, bears and pheasants for fun. Who is guilty of animal cruelty?"
Last Monday, June 6, the second leg of the World Slasher Derby dubbed as the Olympics of cockfighting opened at the historic Araneta Coliseum. It is undoubtedly the biggest gathering of gamefowl breeders from all over the world including big names from America where cockfighting has been declared illegal.
Held twice a year - January and June - the World Slasher Derby which is a brainchild of Jorge "Nene" Araneta, himself a gamefowl enthusiast, has been going on for over three decades and is enjoying unequalled popularity that draws thousands to the Big Dome for a week-long festival of cockfights.
It is so popular that West-based animal rights groups, using a local stooges, attempted to disrupt the World Slasher a few years ago by staging a rally in front of the Big Dome saying cockfighting is cruelty to animals.
Guess what? They were chased off, not by the police or Araneta Center security men, but by the very people who enjoy cockfighting and those who make a living out of this billion-peso and high-employing industry.
While this self-righteous animal rights groups may have failed in their initial attempt, they undoubtedly will come back and do in the Philippines what they did in America, abolish cockfighting altogether and accomplish their objective of "protecting animals."
I have no quarrel with people who love animals and believe that they should not be hurt or encouraged to kill each other.
I have pets too. I breed carabaos, dogs, goats, turkeys and soon, rabbits. My 8-year-old son, Imman, loves animals so much and it could be because of his early exposure to the rural life. In fact, this early he has declared he wants to be an animal doctor.
But I also realize that in the world where we live in, there is a hierarchy among God's creations with human beings on top. So I understand that carabaos are bred to work, dogs to guard (or in the case of the Igorots, for food), goats to produce milk and meat, and horses to race.
Game roosters fight. That is their nature.
Besides, when we breed roosters for fighting are we being cruel to them? The life of a game rooster starts when it is bred out of a proven winning line of breeding fowls developed from the Red Jungle fowls over several hundred years by American breeders.
That rooster will be pampered for at least two years, given the best food and the best care and brought to the pit to be fought. If he wins, his line will be preserved by mating him to a flock of hens. He will be there with his harem for the next 8 to 10 years or until he dies.
I wonder why animal rights activists detest this when they have not even raised a whimper to protect the poor broiler chicken which is pumped with feeds and medicines for 45 days and whose head is chopped off without an opportunity to defend itself.
That's hypocrisy, in my view.
What is more nauseating with this self-righteous groups is that when they raid the gamefowl farms of hillbillies in rural America, they actually either wring the neck of the roosters or gas them en masse. Now isn't that madness?
There is conflict in our world simply because some people believe that everybody should see things their way and mainly because they want to impose their views of righteousness on others. This bigotry is what causes troubles.
I say let's leave each other alone. Sleep with your pets if you like too. But let the Igorots raise their dogs and eat them too, let the gamefowl breeders raise their roosters and fight them, and let the Tribes in the South raise their horses and fight them.
Let us put an end to this nauseating hypocrisy.
Click here to view a list of other articles written by Manny Piñol.
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