Please help tested monkeys, horses, pigeons as art, chickens murdered for Kaporos, Danube Delta wild horses

Although the last horse slaughterhouse in the U.S. closed in 2007, approximately 100,000 U.S. horses are crammed into trailers every year and trucked to slaughterhouses in Canada and Mexico. After a long and frightening journey, these horses—some of whom are former racing champions—are shot with a rifle or a captive-bolt gun, hoisted by one leg into the air, and have their throats slit so that their flesh can be sold to other countries for human consumption. Thoroughbred racehorse Coming Home was hours from being trucked to a slaughterhouse when a PETA investigator rescued her. PETA found a permanent home for this gentle mare, who is just 6 years old, with a PETA member, but the fate of tens of thousands of other cast-off racehorses is terrifying and gruesome. PETA’s undercover investigation of a Japanese slaughterhouse, where American thoroughbreds end up when they’re sold to Japan for breeding, revealed terrified and confused horses trying desperately to escape the facility before they were killed. The American Horse Slaughter Prevention Act of 2011 (S. 1176) would prohibit shipping, transporting, moving, delivering, receiving, possessing, purchasing, selling, or donating horses and other equines for human consumption. If passed, it will effectively end the use of U.S. horses for food—here and abroad.

Please tell your senators today that you support the American Horse Slaughter Prevention Act of 2011 (S. 1176) and urge him or her to vote in favor of this critically needed legislation.


3. Background | From PETA

MCA Denver’s “Thinking About Flying” exhibit is doing wrong by pigeons. They are sending these extraordinary, intelligent, and highly social birds—who mate for life and form strong bonds with other pigeons—home with any visitor to the museum who asks, on the premise that the people will release the birds and see if they can find their way back to a rooftop loft. Will anyone eat a pigeon? Keep them in a tiny box for life as a “pet”? Or, if released, will the birds be at risk, as “racing pigeons” always are, of running into power lines, getting lost, and not knowing how to feed themselves—of being picked off by a hawk or running into bad weather that downs them, among other hazards?

Despite pigeons’ remarkable navigation abilities and intelligence, many birds die when they fly into unexpected bad weather, are poisoned, or are attacked by predators while trying to return to their lofts. If they must land because of injury, exhaustion, or high winds, they will often starve to death because they were born in captivity and haven’t a clue how to fend for themselves out there. The decision by the artist and MCA Denver to encourage that the birds be taken to strangers’ homes in crates, with the strangers then trusted to release them from unfamiliar locations up to 100 miles away, only compounds these risks.

Pigeons also have complex and fragile social relationships. This exhibition exploits these bonds by intentionally separating pigeons from their mates, babies, and eggs; allowing them to be transported to the visitors’ homes; and placing them in the care of people with whom they’re not familiar, which creates intense anxiety for the birds. It is also irresponsible to trust museum visitors who have no experience with pigeons to provide the proper concern and care. This misguided endeavor, tragically, will result in incidents of abuse and neglect, whether deliberate or not. This would be analogous to the museum lending out dogs to visitors and then having these people release them in the neighborhood in the hope that the dogs, who often have a keen ability to find their way home, will find their way back to the museum.

The pigeons are not another inanimate medium to be manipulated or voluntary participants in this experimental installation but are sentient beings who are desperate to return home to their mates, eggs, and offspring—and often don’t make it. Contact Adam Lerner, director of MCA Denver, and urge the museum to cancel this exhibition immediately and adopt a policy that prohibits the exhibition of artwork that includes the use of live animals, the killing of animals, or the bodies of animals killed specifically for the production of a work of art.


4. Background | From Change

Kaporos (“atonements”) is a custom preceding Yom Kippur – the Jewish Day of Atonement – in which chickens are ritually sacrificed by many Orthodox Jews. The person “swings” the chicken, held by the legs or by pinning the bird’s wings backward, around his or her head while chanting about transferring one’s sins symbolically onto the bird. The chicken is then slaughtered and may or may not be given to the poor. Prior to the ceremony, the chickens are packed in crates, and birds not used have been found abandoned in their crates when the ceremony was over.

The Alliance to End Chickens as Kaporos seeks to replace chickens in kaporos rituals for 3 principal reasons:

The use of chickens as kaporos is cruel. They suffer in being held with their wings pinned backward, in being swung over the heads of practitioners, and in being packed in crates, often for days without food or water leading up to the ritual, which violates tsa’ar ba’alei chaim, the mandate prohibiting cruelty to animals.

The use of chickens is not required by Jewish law. It is not a mitzvah but a custom that originated in the middle ages.

There is an acceptable substitute that not only avoids cruelty but can help reduce hunger and show compassion. Money can be used as a non-animal alternative, and funds raised can be given directly to charities that provide food for the poor and hungry throughout the year, including 13,000 Jewish families living at or below the poverty line in New York City.

EndChickensAsKaporos’s YouTube Channel

Eminent Orthodox Rabbis Oppose Using Chickens in Kaporos Rituals on Grounds of Religion, Morality, and Compassion for Animals

Since this is not a clear duty but rather a tradition, and in the light of the kashrut problems and cruelty to animals, and in the light of all of what our aforementioned rabbis said, it is recommended that one should prefer to conduct the atonement ceremony with money, thus also fulfilling the great mitzva of helping poor people.

–Rabbi Shlomo Aviner, Head of Jerusalem’s Yeshivat Ateret Cohanim and Rabbi of Beit El, in a letter to the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals in Israel quoted in The Jerusalem Post, September 14, 2010. http://www.jpost.com/VideoArticles/Article.aspx?id=188106

Beyond the objections of the Ramban, Rashba and the Bet Yosef to the custom of ‘kapparot,’ and beyond the warnings of rabbinic authorities such as the Chayei Adam, Kaf HaChaim, Aruch HaShulchan and the Mishanah Brurah regarding the halachic infringements involved in using live fowl for this custom, the latter also desecrates the prohibition against “tzaar baalei chayim” (causing cruelty to animals). Those who wish to fulfill this custom can do so fully and indeed in a far more halachically acceptable manner by using money as a substitute as proposed by the latter authorities mentioned above.

–Rabbi David Rosen, CBE, KSG, International Director of Interreligious Affairs, AJC, and Chief Rabbinate of Israel’s Honorary Advisor on Interfaith Relations. Former Chief Rabbi of Ireland, August 25, 2011

A custom must operate within the confines of Judaism’s basic fundamental values. The Torah prohibits Jews from causing any unnecessary pain to living creatures, even psychological pain. It says in the Book of Proverbs, ‘The righteous person considers the soul of his or her animal.’ The pain caused to the chickens in the process of performing Kapparot is absolutely unnecessary. Giving money is not only a more humane method of performing the practice of Kapparot but it is also a more efficient way of ensuring that those who are in need will receive the requisite assistance.

–Rabbi Shlomo Segal, Rabbi of Beth Shalom of Kings Bay in Brooklyn, New York, August 25, 2011

If you agree, please sign our petition urging practitioners of kaporos to use money instead of chickens. Thank you for your support.


5. Background | From Change

International Contributing Supporters of this Petition include Victor S. Popaliciu from ROMANIA, Valerie Azar from UNITED STATES, Judy Levy from UNITED STATES, Isabelle Fuentes from UNITED STATES, Josie Jansen from GERMANY,  Silvana Commendatore from ARGENTINA, Persian Horse from PERSIA (IRAN),  Edwin Waldman Attie from ARGENTINA, Chris McCullins from ENGLAND.    People from all over the world are United to Demand Justice for the Danube Delta Wild Horses of Romania.

The international community is outraged with the news of the bloody massacre of thousands of wild horses native of the Danube Delta in Romania. Corrupt local Tulcea officials have grossly overstepped their authority and waged a bloody war on these indigenous animals protected by international law. Tulcea has slaughtered over 1,000 of these wild horses with less than 500 of them remaining. Please join us in growing this petition which is addressed to local and international authorities with the power to take immediate measures to protect these horses. Thank you for lending your voice for justice for the wild horses of the Danube Delta!

PLEASE CLICK ON THE FOLLOWING LINK FOR MORE PICTURES OF THE DANUBE DELTA WILD HORSES AND FOR A VIDEO OF THE ROMANIAN ROUNDUP:

http://thepersianhorse.wordpress.com/2011/06/20/romania-land-of-castles-and-romance-now-has-the-blood-of-wild-horses-flowing-in-the-danube-sign-petition-now/

See More:

• Animal Wrongs
• Cruelty-Free