Singer Paul McCartney of The Beatles once said “if slaughter houses had glass walls, everyone would be a vegetarian”. Inspired by these words, the Federation of Indian Animal Protection Organisations (FIAPO) organised an exhibition at Dilli Haat, INA, to stir public conscience and bring a change. They displayed banners and posters of images of what goes on inside the closed doors of a slaughterhouse.
The exhibition titled ‘If slaughterhouses had glass walls’ is part of a multi-city tour that aims to highlight the practices followed at slaughter houses — right from when the animal is born to the conditions in which they are raised, transported, killed and sold in the market.
The organisers tried their best to strike a chord with visitors to the market to show them the reality of how their food reached the table and urged them to follow animal-friendly diet.
Shweta Sood, who is a part of FIAPO, said exhibitions are one of the tools that the organisation uses to create awareness about the amount of meat India consumes. She says, “According to the government of India’s livestock census, India consumes 300 million cattle, 500 million chickens, 185 million sheep and goats a year.”
The organisation has also started a project to target young adults by launching an ‘adopt a college scheme’ in which volunteers distribute pamphlets to students that highlights the environmental, health and other issues related to animal slaughter. The project has been launched in five colleges in Delhi University. It is an effort to target young adults because they feel that it is this age group that is most likely to make a healthy choice.
FAIPO’s spokesperson Varda Mehrotra said although much of the Indian public is sensitised towards animal issues, especially those facing street dogs, the bigger picture of institutionalised cruelty is missing from the minds of many due to which people are making uninformed diet choices.
