On January 16, 2012, KARA and other animal groups protests against the Ministry of Food, Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries's handling of recent cattle pricing problems and its decision to promote veal.
Background to the cattle farming crisis can be found here.
Protesting outside the Gwacheon government complex.
Remarkably, the Minister of Food, Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, Seo Gyu-yong, announced that South Korean veal will be produced to be so tender that even a baby with no teeth can chew on it!
Reading between the lines, it is obvious that the ministor and his department want to get people eating meat younger than ever to boost meat industry profits.
Never mind the cruelty involved. This again shows not just the lack of ethical concern in the Korean government's practices but also how out of touch and backward it still is with regard to animal welfare.
This promotional effort will also represent another shift in Korea towards the American diet, a diet heavy in meat and diary and one that is responsible for a host of health problems in the US, from obesity to heart disease to diabetes and even cancer.
KARA Director Yim Soonrye campaiging outside the ministry on what was a cold day.
Another bizarre and cruel idea the minister has is to create a "Virgin hanwoo" brand to promote the consumption of Korean hanwoo beef.
KARA and other groups demanded the government do the following:
- Support farms with food for cattle so they do not starve to death.
- Stop the cruel idea of promoting veal.
- Eliminate FTA regulations and imports of foreign livestock products.
- Provide a lasting solution for Korean cattle farmers and cattle.
KARA is a volunteer organization that relies on support from the community. You can help by donating so we can continue to fight for the protection of animals in Korea.
One-off donation:
101 White-Vill, 208-43 Budam-Dong, Jongno-Gu, SEOUL, 110-817. Tel: 02-3482-0999 / Fax: 02-3482-8835 (Intl. dial 82 first) Address in Korean: 서울시 종로구 부암동 208-43 화이트빌 101호
Few people seem to perceive fully as yet that the most far-reaching
consequence of the establishment of the common origin of all species is
ethical; that it logically involved a re-adjustment of altruistic morals
by enlarging as a necessity of rightness the application of what has
been called “The Golden Rule” beyond the area of mere mankind to
that of the whole animal kingdom.
Thomas Hardy
They are not brethren; they are not underlings; they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendour and travail of the earth.
Henry Beston
The question is not, "Can they reason?" nor, "Can they talk?" but rather, "Can they suffer?
Jeremy Bentham
I have no doubt that it is a part of the destiny of the human race, in its gradual improvement, to leave off eating animals, as surely as the savage tribes have left off eating each other when they came in contact with the more civilized.
Henry David Thoreau
If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favour freedom, and yet deprecate agitation, are people who want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the roar of its many waters. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.
Frederick Douglass
I know, in my soul, that to eat a creature who is raised to be eaten, and who never has a chance to be a real being, is unhealthy. It's like...you're just eating misery. You're eating a bitter life.
Alice Walker
As long as man continues to be the ruthless destroyer of lower living beings he will never know health or peace. For as long as men massacre animals, they will kill each other. Indeed, he who sows the seed of murder and pain cannot reap joy and love.
Pythagoras
Auschwitz begins wherever someone looks at a slaughterhouse and thinks: they're only animals.
Theodor Adorno
We have enslaved the rest of the animal creation, and have treated our distant cousins in fur and feathers so badly that beyond doubt, if they were able to formulate a religion, they would depict the Devil in human form.
William Ralph Inge
In their behavior toward creatures, all men are Nazis. Human beings see oppression vividly when they're the victims. Otherwise they victimize blindly and without a thought.
Isaac Bashevis Singer
All the arguments to prove man's superiority cannot shatter this hard fact: in suffering the animals are our equals.
Peter Singer
A man can live and be healthy without killing animals for food; therefore, if he eats meat, he participates in taking animal life merely for the sake of his appetite. And to act so is immoral.
Leo Tolstoy
The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.
Mahatma Gandhi
Non-violence leads to the highest ethics, which is the goal of all evolution. Until we stop harming all other living beings, we are still savages.
Thomas Edison
Animals are my friends... and I don't eat my friends.
George Bernard Shaw
The love for all living creatures is the most noble attribute of man.
Charles Darwin
I have from an early age abjured the use of meat, and the time will come when men such as I will look upon the murder of animals as they now look upon the murder of men.
Leonardo Da Vinci
Nothing will benefit human health and increase chances for survival of life on Earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet.
