|
| |
- Looks That Kill
Beauty without Cruelty
Going to a party or a social function makes it imperative for us to
dress our best, right from the perfume to the shoes that we wear. But have you
ever given a moment's thought to how many innocent creatures must have been
ruthlessly killed for the mere sake of your luxuries? Following are some
excerpts from a thought-provoking article by Maneka Gandhi which will make you
think twice before you put on your cosmetics.
How is your talcum powder, lipstick and hair dye made safe for you to
use? A tube is thrust down the throat of thousands of tiny chattering friendly
squirrel monkeys squashed together in cages. Each item is fed in to find out
at which dosage level the animal dies.
Perfume uses a civet musk base. The civet is shoved into a 25 x 30cm
cage where it cannot even raise its head. Every ten days, it is whipped
because when it is in pain it secretes musk in its pouch. The pouch is then
forced open and scraped with a spatula. This is repeated every ten days till
the animal dies - at less than quarter of its normal lifespan.
A rabbit's head is clamped in a clutch and the eyes pegged open with
metal clips. Shampoo concentrate is dropped in. The rabbit screams in agony,
struggling till it breaks its back. Over 1,00,000 rabbit eyes go into just the
shampoo trade every year.
A timid musk deer, of which very few are left, is lured out of the
dense Himalayan vegetation and caught in a gin trap with spiked teeth which
bite into the foot. The animal lies there for days till it dies. Then, if it
does not have musk (kasturi) neede for a perfume base, it is thrown away as
trash.
Snake skin, crocodile skin, lizard skin? The crocodile is lassoed and
hauled up. It thrashes for hours till it is stabbed in the neck to sever the
spinal nerve. The skin on the underside of the belly is taken for leather and
the live crocodile is lowered back into the water for feed.
Snake skin is more elastic if taken when the snake is alive. A nail
through the head pins it to a tree, a foot holds the writhing tail straight
and a knife cuts down each side to rip off the skin. The same method is used
for lizards.
Ordinary leather comes from the skin of dead animals - those killed
not for meat, but those killed for making shoes and bags. Cows, buffaloes,
little calves (nice soft leather for boots), all taken off cattle pounds and
killed. Even stray dogs are taken from municipal compounds and made into dog
leather.
Pregnant mares make estrogen for cosmetics. So they are kept
constantly pregnant. And since the estrogen is in the urine, they are kept in
harness their whole lives. The unwanted foals are sold by the perfumery for
medical research.
Aftershave lotion is made burn proof by a very cruel process. A guinea
pig is defuzzed by using adhesive tape which pulls the hair off each patch
of skin. Aftershave is splashed on and inspected days later for chemical
burns. The same animal is later defuzzed repeatedly till the aftershave
mixture is just right. Or it dies.
Silk moth pupa cocooned in a soft security blanket is thrown into
boiling water and cooked till the thread comes off and is made into silk.
Twenty thousand silk moths are boiled alive to make just one kilogram of silk.
Every silk saree you wear has caused the death of at least 50,000 fellow
creatures.
When a piece of grit embeds itself in the soft body tissue of an
oyster, it wraps it up in nacre to lessen the pain, and a pearl is formed. To
make a cultured pearl, the oyster is opened with tongs, an incission is made
and gravel put in. The oyster lives in extreme pain till the pearl is ready
and it is killed to extract it.
The soft curly Karakul hat is made of karakul lamb hair. A pregnant
karakul ewe is hit over a hundred times with an iron rod to induce premature
birth. The lamb is then skinned alive in front of her so that its fur
remains soft and curly.
Those horrible white caps and white fur trimmings on children's
clothes and fancy bags are the death of rabbits. Rabbit farms are just killing
farms where the little rabbit is kept in a small cage till it grows to a
certain size and is then electrocuted. In certain farms, they are even
strangled manually, so that their fur is not spoilt by their blood.
Killing an elephant is forbidden but the ivory collector can take the
tusks of a dead elephant. So, he kills it by throwing giant thumbtacks across
it's path which get embedded in the foot, cause gangrene and then slow death.
Or he smears the jackfruit on the tree with poison and waits for the elephant
to eat its favorite fruit. This is how you get your ivory bangles.
Do you use hair shaving brushes, hairbrushes, boot polish brushes,
eyeliner and rouge brushes? - all this hair is torn out by the handful while
the animal - in most cases the harmless, playful squirrel - is still alive.
|