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- Denis Giles
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Maneka Sanjay Gandhi
5 years ago I requested the Head of the Bar Council of India to get animal welfare introduced as a subject in the law colleges. He did it immediately. The result has been much more sensitive and informed lawyers, an annual moot court that is hosted by NLU Bangalore, PhDs in animal welfare (the first one was in NLU Cuttack), more people aware of animal welfare activism and far more sensitive judges. A big thank you to Shri Manan Kumar Mishra!
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- Denis Giles
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- Maneka Sanjay Gandhi
Even though people have been vegetarian for centuries (Confucious, Plato, Jesus and his brother John, Leonardo da Vinci, Einstein, are some that I can think of outside India), the term vegetarian was coined in 1839 and referred to people who ate a plant-based diet.
For the last 200 years, since commercial slaughterhouses were invented, people became strong meat eaters and the result has been devastation on the planet. Now both realization and reaction has set in all over the world. Being vegetarian is fashionable. Few people will now insist in public that they are die hard meat eaters. Most say apologetically “we don’t eat meat at home” or “we don’t eat it very often” . Many people will say they are vegetarian – but they eat some fish, others eat eggs, others milk. I know one vegetarian who eats the gravy of meat dishes with the excuse that it is made of vegetables !! Everyone has a different definition of what they do and don’t want to eat - as vegetarians.
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- Denis Giles
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Maneka Sanjay Gandhi
India is in the throes of a terrible viral epidemic. Much worse than the Bird Flu, much worse than swine flu. It has 91% mortality and, while it is mainly dogs, it can spread to cats of all kinds as well and God knows which other animals. The killer is the deadly Canine Parvo Virus (CPV).
Outbreaks have been reported from all over India. Thousands of pups have died. My own People For Animals shelters have several thousand cases admitted. Shelters from Mangalore to Siliguri have shut down and refused to admit normal accident cases as they are full of parvo afflicted, dying, animals. Each shelter is a war zone with makeshift drip stands, or volunteers patiently holding IV fluids while they go slowly into small dying bodies.