Culture

A Danish Radio Host Killed A Rabbit Live On Air, To Protest Against Animal Cruelty Or Something

Literally makes no sense.

by Elizabeth Flux  27 May 2015

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From time to time you will feel so strongly about an issue that you are moved to make a stand. Perhaps you’ll join a protest, or maybe you’ll write an open letter or sign a petition. Potentially you’ll picket an event.

What you won’t do, however, is beat a baby rabbit to death on air.

Danish radio host Asger Juhl is apparently sick of the double standards he sees present in his society: people are willing to eat meat and prop up an industry that treats animals as a commodity and not as living things, and yet still describe themselves as animal lovers. Not content to merely express his views about animal cruelty to his sizeable audience, though, Juhl decided to conduct a small-scale study that the creators of The Stanford Prison experiment would have been proud to call their own.

Enter Allan, a baby rabbit that was brought into the studio and repeatedly hit over the neck with a bike pump live on air, in accordance with “careful instructions by a professional animal caretaker from a Danish Zoo”. The then-very-dead Allan was taken home, cooked and eaten by Juhl and his family.

The response, somewhat unsurprisingly, has been pretty negative. People have taken to Twitter calling for Juhl to be sacked, and the inevitable Change.org petition asking for his immediate removal has already gained over 9000 signatures. News coverage world-wide has driven people to the station’s Facebook page, prompting heated arguments.

In the fallout following this stunt, Juhl has triumphantly decried the resultant outrage as an example of the hypocrisy he was trying to highlight: we care about a cute bunny, but are indifferent toward the other animals that die every day.

Radio24syv has stood behind Juhl’s actions however, posting on their Facebook page about the horrendous condition animals bred for meat are subject to every day.

“Animal welfare does not seem to apply to animals in the food industry,” the station argues, claiming that the idea behind the stunt was to highlight hypocrisy and prompt a response. In their view, Allan was killed humanely — an arguable claim considering that the killing tool of choice was a bike pump wielded by an amateur who had to hit the rabbit in the neck more than once.

The issues they  highlight are important, sure — but you straight up can’t protest for animal rights by killing an animal. It’s like protesting against the fur industry by skinning fifty minks and wearing their pelts. You know, to show that it’s a bad thing. What’s next on their agenda? Holding annual Hunger Games in an attempt to show children that violence is bad?

Their arguments also contradict each other. They point to the high demand for meat in their country, but don’t suggest vegetarianism. They also point to Juhl eating Allan as a good thing despite the country’s appetite for meat being the underlying cause for the problem they are highlighting; “Consumers generally do not kill animals themselves, but we buy and eat animals, that have lead sad lives. We just don’t see it.”

What do they actually want? People to eat less meat? Animals bred for eating to be treated better? For people to kill their food themselves? Before making such a drastic gesture, surely they should have figured out exactly what they had hoped to achieve outside of shock value.

The point also remains; this is a radio show, all sound effects and no visuals. If they really did just want to make a point, couldn’t they have just pretended? Did they actually have to involve a live animal at all?

“We wanted to expose the vast hypocrisy surrounding our relationship with animals. So far we have succeeded.” Yes, Radio24syv highlighted an issue, but the only hypocrisy they managed to uncover was their own. Great success!

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