Animal loving means something else in Wales

Shambo's finally been taken. Sadly I note that the formal diagnosis of bovine TB is made at the post mortem.
At the removal I noted a lack of animal rights activists. Perhaps they knew that the legal case turned not on animal rights but on the balance between the need to kill Shambo to protect public health and the right the monks had to respect for their religious views. At first instance Judge Gary Hickinbottom was unimpressed by the argument of the Welsh Ministers. But in the rematch the Court of Appeal [1] decided that even a large invasion of the monks right to respect for their religious views was justified on the facts. A contentious decision that deserved to go to further appeal. Yet the case did not make it to House of Lords let alone the European Court of Human Rights. A tragedy in itself.
All this came about by the exercise of a discretionary power vested in the the Welsh legislature and exercised by or on behalf of Jane Davidson as the Minister for Sustainability and Rural Development.This power permitted avenues other than slaughter of Shambo to be countenanced. A third way was open but not pursued.
If there is a difference between a farmer and a monk it must be that the farmer sees the cow as a means to an end whilst the monk regards the cow as an end in itself. It is this that creates the sense of injustice in the secular mind. The farmer can be recompensed by money for the loss of his cow for we can replace the means with the end. But this is not the case for the monks. The Welsh Assembly did not seem able to see this distinction.
In reaching the decision to slaughter Shambo and then in enforcing that decision the Welsh Assembly have demonstrated a callous disregard for the religious sensitivites of a small group of Hindu priests. These actions of the Welsh Assembly also expose a rigidity of thinking and lack of moral vision that must cause grave concern both within and beyond the Hindu community. [1] R (Swami Suryananda) v Welsh Ministers. Telegraph Law Reports 23 July 2007, CA
(c) R Mohindra 2007

Update:
01.09.2021 Geronimo the alpaca has met a similar fate recently on simlar grounds. Ths happened in England. Here the risk was bovine TB. There were no countervailing religious considerations, just a claim for animal interests to be weighted as some form of legal rights.  

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