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INDIA'S minister for Social Justice and Empowerment, MANEKA GANDHI, holds the world's first cabinet post to include the well-being of animals. In all other countries, animal welfare is a sub-division of portfolios such as Agriculture or Environment. In South Africa, animals are legally classified as 'things', 'goods' or 'products' and fall under the ministry of Agriculture. However, Agricultural Minister Derek Hanekom has amply demonstrated that his priorities lie with the farmers and with the trade, live or otherwise, of these agricultural "products". In this exclusive and inspirational interview, Maneka Gandhi speaks to Louise van der Merwe from New Delhi and urges all South Africans to join the struggle for animal liberation.
Q. Minister Gandhi, where did you grow up and at what age did you first become aware of your compassion for animals? Maneka Gandhi (MG): Since my father's work took him around India, I traveled widely as a child. Our home always had animals and ever since I can remember I felt an empathy with them - understanding the fear and helplessness of creatures outside the system, so vulnerable to cruelty and oppression yet entirely unable to themselves fight against it. Q. What incidents in your life spurred you on to fight for the well being of animals? MG: Since animals are the earth's weakest creatures, I believe they deserve our strongest protection. I began my work for animals out of a sense of grief and outrage. Now I have come to see that apart from the injustice of ill-treating creatures that have done us no harm, there are enormous economic, ecological and health hazards caused by cruelty towards animals. So it is both a practical and moral concern and I truly believe that animal welfare is human welfare. In protecting animals, we ensure our own survival. Q. Are we correct in our understanding that you started an organisation called People for Animals in India? When did you start this organisation and what are its aims? MG: If animal welfare is to become a mainstream concern, it needed a strong all-India organisation to lobby for legislative changes, to effect local reforms, to challenge cruelty in court, to enhance and enforce animal protection laws, to set up shelters for destitute animals, to improve veterinary skills and facilities, to produce literature and media programming on animal issues, to change harmful consumption patterns and to bring together all those people who would like to see animals treated better and were willing to work for it and turn them into an effective fighting force. PEOPLE FOR ANIMALS was set up in 1995 to do this. Today it has over 70 units around the country and a string of big and little achievements to its credit. It has stopped camels from being used for joyrides on the beach; it has stopped bull fights in Goa; it has made dissection no longer necessary in schools; it has had animal testing for drugs and cosmetics made optional; it has stopped the killing of homeless dogs in Indian cities and replaced it with a sterilisation programme; it has stopped the exhibition of wild animals in circuses; it has stopped mobile zoos; it has set up shelters and animal ambulance services in several cities; it has produced books on animal laws and first aid; it has two weekly shows on national television; it has promoted vegetarianism through newspaper columns and local campaigns; it has organised police training sessions, animal care camps and adoption programmes. Its 200,000 members include lawyers, doctors, teachers, journalists, businessmen, actors, artists, students and so on. PFA's biggest success has been to turn animal welfare into a relevant concern with a brave, committed and growing following. Q. By including animal welfare in your ministry, India's animals now have a compassionate voice in Parliament. Do you find that there is a willingness to listen to this voice? MG: In a country where there is widespread poverty and need, animal welfare has traditionally been pushed aside. What I believe and what a growing number of people are beginning to understand is that human and animal welfare are not competitive but complementary concerns. Animal welfare is as much an economic as a moral imperative. There is a growing subscription to this view both in Parliament and in the country. The latest budget has introduced a tax on each animal slaughtered for export. I have introduced stringent controls on animal testing and have strengthened and extended the animal protection laws. My ministry has earmarked funds to help local groups set up shelter and rescue homes for animals. Q. According to official reports, First World countries are starting a new form of "colonialism" - by exporting their factory farms to Third World or less developed countries. We recently had first-hand experience of this when a Polish company, which, according to Polish law, may no longer produce paté de foie gras in Poland as from 1999, promised the Botswana government a multi-million rand investment if it were given permission to start up foie gras production in Botswana. Do you find that this new form of "colonialism" is taking hold in India? And what is your opinion of this new "colonialism"? MG: It is entirely correct that animal exploitation is traveling down from the First World. Blocked by legislation in their own countries, manufacturers are taking their grisly business elsewhere. Recently there was a move to set up ostrich farming in India which was successfully blocked by PFA. Junk food is part of this trend. Fast food chains like KFC and McDonalds bring in their wake factory farms with all their attendant miseries. In the absence of government action, local protest is the answer. When KFC arrived in India it was vigorously opposed by animal and farmers' groups and it has since fared miserably. But the worst example of economic "colonialism" is meat export. India's first mechanised slaughterhouse set up entirely for export has resulted in a string of disasters. Water has become scarce with the huge amounts being used up by the abattoir. Subsoil reserves have been poisoned or exhausted. Tube wells in all the surrounding villages have gone dry or undrinkable. The prices of milk have escalated as even productive animals are being slaughtered to meet the factory's huge killing capacity. Villagers can no longer afford even farm animals for cultivation. As a result they are forced to rent tractors increasing fuel consumption and costs. Similarly, there is no longer any dung hitherto dried and used for fuel, so they are cutting trees and burning coal. Untreated slaughter wastes have poisoned the soil and water. Farms have become less productive pushing up the costs of grain. One single slaughterhouse to supply cheap meat abroad, has trapped our own people in a downward spiral of economic and ecological impoverishment. The same is happening the world over. If not the meat, then it is exporting crops to feed meat herds that is destroying developing nations. The Netherlands imports crop grown on an area three times its size to fulfill its enormous appetite for meat and milk. So Brazil's rain forests are turned into hamburgers and hot dogs; Argentina's pampas is poisoned with fertilisers and pesticides and Africa's jungles cleared for grazing. Exporting gems and minerals is another instance of forfeiting our future. Mining is primarily responsible for habitat destruction. In Botswana the Okavango Delta is being drained for diamond mining. Even in South Africa poisonous radon gas is a part of the gold production process. Then there is the wildlife trade. Japan's ivory fixation has pushed the African elephant to the brink of extinction. As Minister for Environment in 1990, I completely banned the use and trade of all ivory both Indian and imported. All stocks were sealed and seized. The ban has succeeded and our elephants now have only poachers to contend with, not organised business. Africa needs to do the same. It is unfortunate that CITES, which had earlier completely banned international trade in ivory, has now relaxed the provision to allow the sale of old ivory stocks held by some African countries. Sure enough, this has led to a fresh spate of elephant killings. Q. Do you believe that the next century will be kinder to animals? MG: All around the world, animal welfare reforms are gathering momentum. Sweden is working to end intensive farming, Switzerland has already stopped battery farming of hens, England has banned animal testing for cosmetics, India has banned the use of wild animals in circuses, the EC has declared animals as sentient beings. I see the tide beginning to turn. Q. Is there any particular message you would like to impart to the people of South Africa regarding the well being of animals and what role they, as individuals, and as a nation, can play? MG: The people of South Africa know about oppression and injustice. They know about cruelty and suffering. I ask them for compassion to animals - the voiceless victims of human violence. They have endured far greater pain and indignity, face far more abuse and atrocity than any other beings on earth. Even worse, their sufferings have gone entirely unrecorded and unnoticed. Nobody cares about rabbits blinded to test cosmetics, butterflies poisoned and pinned for trinkets, tigers hunted for trophies, goats sacrificed for religious rituals, bears trapped for entertainment, donkeys overloaded for transport, birds caged for amusement, snakes skinned alive for bags, zebras poached for pelts, elephants murdered for ivory, monkeys mutilated for research, horses whipped for sport... and the ghastly list goes on. There is not a single species we have not ill-used. It was Mahatma Gandhi who said "The greatness of a nation can be judged by the way it treats its animals." South Africa has just waged and won its own battle for freedom. I now ask you to join another such struggle -- the battle for animal liberation. It is bound to be a hard and fierce war for it will be against powerfully entrenched interests -- people who make money from misery and murder. Our task will be all the more difficult for, unlike in other movements, here, we can expect no help from the victims we fight for. Nevertheless we will triumph. So right, so just, so obviously moral is the case for animal rights, that it cannot be forever denied. Just as apartheid collapsed in South Africa, so too shall human oppression of animals. I intend to be there when it happens and I expect to find you there beside me. Take a simple step today -- turn vegetarian. Everything else comes later. If anyone would like to know more about PEOPLE FOR ANIMALS in India, please note the following: People for Animals
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