Posted on December 19, 2009 - by Stephen Vantassel
Criminalization of Food
A December 7, 2010 Metro Reporter sub-headline reads “Gino D’Acampo, the winner of I’m a Celebrity…Get Me Out of Here!, and fellow contestant Stuart Manning are facing criminal charges for animal cruelty after cooking and eating a rat on the TV programme.” I have noted for sometime that the end result of animal rights legislation would be the criminalization of all kinds of human activities. It appears the slide toward moral devolution is occurring faster than I anticipated.
According to the story, these two contestants were hungry and decided to kill a rat and eat it. It seems the idea of the show is to put celebrities into difficult situations and see how they behave and interact with other contestants. For killing the rat, the two contestants have been charged with animal cruelty, which in Australia (where the filming occurred) can be a few years in prison (according to a Dec 7, 2009 AP article, Sydney).
I suspect the officials charge is over the killing of the rat was unnecessary and being recorded could be a kind of animal snuff-film. At the very least, we must commend the officials for not being biased against rats as animal rights protest industry activists wish. But I am concerned with the direction this kind of prosecution can go, in addition to being concerned that charges were brought up in the first place.
I believe these types of prosecutions will become more frequent in the years ahead. Animal rights protest industry activists will use them to test how far they can implement the elements of their religion. Let’s just say that sometimes the slippery slope argument (i.e. if this happens this result is inevitable) is a fallacy. But I must say that the predictions of those, like myself, regarding the end desires of the animal rights protest industry are beginning to become true. Thus the slippery slope argument isn’t always a fallacy.
Stephen Vantassel is a tutor of Theology at King’s Evangelical Divinity School. He specializes in ethics (particularly environmental ethics and political commentary).
Copyright 2009. Stephen M. Vantassel.
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December 21, 2009
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I too saw this reported, but on the BBC. I felt the whole thing to be quite extraordinary. I have had the misfortune to watch this programme once, and I have to say from what I have seen, the so-called Bushtucker trials consist of little more than abusing the contestants in the name of entertainment. In the face of this, it comes as something of a surprise to me that government officials have intervened to prevent the future abuse of a rat…
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December 25, 2009
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Thanks for your comments Ollie. I simply wanted the public to realize that the animal rights agenda is permeating our society faster than people realize. Remember, a cardinal doctrine of the animal rights movement is the hatred of people. Now there are certainly some individuals in the movement that are exceptions to this broad stroke. But overall, ARs see humans as a disease on the planet. This is why they typically support abortion but call meat eaters, murderers.