English | Buddhist Perspective on Avian Influenza
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Author Jogye On14-02-28 15:46 Views16,081 Comments0Related links
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Reduce Meat Consumption to Reduce Avian Influenza
Since the detection of the first occurrence of Avian Influenza (AI) in 2003, over 25 million poultries were slaughtered in the past 10 years. With the reasons of reducing the spread of bird flu quickly and due to the lack of government budget for prevention, Korean government have slaughtered live chickens and ducks in 3 km radius of where the AI has been reported. Just this year alone, over 3.8 million poultries were disposed of. However, the actual infected number was thought to be less than 0.0004 %, of 121 chickens and ducks, which reveal the seriousness of irrational slaughter issues on hand.
The director from the Department of Social Affairs of the Jogye Order held a Forum on February 17th, under the title of “Bird Flu Outbreak: Alternatives to Killing and Promotion of Peace & Life. “
Professor Park Chang Gil (President of Prevention of Cruelty) began the forum with the topic, “Bird Flu catastrophe: the social reflection and practices,” where he stated ‘we must discard the concentrated livestock factories and massacre of live stocks as preventative measures. Professor Park took the example of 1918 Spanish flu pandemic which infected more than 500 million people across the world, and quoted the example of World Health Organization (WHO) that such devastation may repeat itself if the outbreak spreads out of control to humans.
Another forum was held at the International Conference Room in the Center for Korean Buddhist History and Culture, on February 28, 2014.
Buddhist perspective on Ahimsa, precept of non-killing was discussed in the forum, while discussing further the seriousness of irrational slaughter of poultries.