• The BBC aired footage of cruelly transported Indian cattle, triggering a deluge of calls from irate viewers who agreed with PETA that action by the Indian government must be swift and immediate.
• A high-level meeting of government officials and representatives of the meat industry was held in Uttar Pradesh, but PETA received no reports of actual improvements in slaughter in Uttar Pradesh as a result of this meeting.
• PETA representatives wrote to various officials and slaughterhouse owners, offering to bring in international experts in the field of animal handling and welfare to provide training and guidance to them and their staff. Most of PETA’s offers were ignored.
• PETA’s international animal welfare delegate Bob Tappan met with various Muslim officials to discuss ways to deter transporters and slaughterhouse workers from unnecessarily abusing animals, including Shahi Imam Bukhari of the Jame Masjid. Shahi Imam agreed to communicate the message for compassionate treatment of animals, as required in Islam, to butchers and members of the Muslim community in Delhi and throughout India. He further pledged that he would address the matter in one of his khutbas or namaz.
• In late July, members of the CLE accompanied Poorva Joshipura, PETA’s research manager, to slaughterhouses in Maharashtra, Karnataka and West Bengal. Conditions in most of India’s abattoirs are atrocious, with animals being forced onto blood- and gut-drenched slaughter floors and butchered in full view of each other with dull, unsharpened knives. The CLE witnessed animals’ legs being sawn off, sometimes by young boys—especially at the Calcutta abattoir—and the cattle being sliced open while still conscious. Heads, skins and other body parts were seen strewn across the floor while the workers butchered in ankle-deep blood. Municipal officials and other slaughterhouse owners agreed with PETA that amendments to the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act needed to be passed to deter illegal cattle transport.
• Calcutta authorities agreed to take steps to improve conditions that would simply involve proper management and training, but animals continued to be needlessly tortured, and no actual changes were made.
• On 2nd August, PETA advised the CLE that it would extend its moratorium on campaigning against Indian leather exports for a year and possibly indefinitely, subject to monthly review, because of a series of preliminary actions taken by the leather group to put pressure on illegal and grossly inhumane cattle transport practices and the CLE’s provision of progress reports. PETA warned the Ministry of Tourism, however, that it had started preparing for what could be a devastating campaign against Indian tourism. Although the Indian government had written some letters to the states and had claimed that funds were available for modernisation, PETA felt its response was inadequate given the enormity and immediacy of the problem. The Indian tourist business generates more than Rs. 42,555 crore in foreign visitor revenue, according to the government figures most recently made available. Among PETA’s requests to the government were that the amendments to the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act be put before the Parliament immediately. These amendments had been languishing since February 1999 as they awaited clearance by Prime Minister Vajpayee. The amendments, among other provisions, would raise the penalty for violations such as deliberate tailbone-breaking and suffocation from overcrowding, thereby working to motivate animal handlers to obey the law. PETA also wanted action on rail-transport issues, as the minister of railways had refused to take any action against cruelty in the transporting of cattle by train.
• On 24th August, Hashim, the then chair of the CLE, sent a four-page appeal to the Muslim Law Board, asking that humane slaughter techniques be adopted in Indian slaughterhouses.
• Asia’s number one box-office star, Jackie Chan, learned of the hideous cruelty and wrote to Prime Minister Vajpayee. Referring to cattle allowed to suffocate in hot, overcrowded lorries and stabbed by children on filthy abattoir floors, Chan wrote in a letter to the prime minister, ‘I am especially alarmed that such abuses, while illegal under India’s stringent animal welfare laws, continue in this wonderful land where reverence for life is a matter of national pride.’
Late 1998-1999
2000
January-February
March-April
May-June
July-August
September-October
November-December
2001
January-February
March-April
May-June
July-August
September-October
November-December
