No Heifer in a practical World Vision

 

T'is the Season of Giving. Just don't fall for the claims of two Gift Catalogs: Heifer International (Little Rock, AR) and World Vision (Federal Way, WA). Both suggest the gift of farmed animals to families in sub developed countries to help them toward self-sufficiency. It takes Lamb-like innocence to believe that. 

In countries conducive to a farm economy animals can be obtained right there. If they are not available it is because their upkeep is not feasible, as in arid environments, malaria endemic areas, etc. If farmed animals are available, however, and a person cannot barter or save enough money to buy a couple of Chickens or a Piglet then he or she shouldn't be "given" an animal.  Feeding, watering, sheltering, veterinary care ... require money and effort, and without them the "gift" dies. The family is as poor as before and animals have suffered needlessly.

Both gift catalogs picture smiling people, especially children, of every race in rapturous communion with the animals they've received from donors. The animal enclosures, pastures, watering pools, look like idealized developed-world equivalents. Let's get real: Anyone who has traveled the backroads of the USA or seen the interior of industrial farms anywhere knows that's not how animals are kept. Imagine then how they are treated in the Middle East, Africa, the Orient ... where the concept of animal welfare is alien, where there are no laws to protect animals, where the intended beneficiaries of farmed animals lack the comforts of the average Western pet. 

In reality, the animals portrayed in idyllic conditions are slaughtered inhumanely as soon as they are fattened ... if they are lucky. Else they will die of neglect, abuse, and disease. And the family in Nicaragua or the Philippines, will still be dirt poor.

Why? Because poverty doesn't happen by divine fiat, or capitalistic injustices, or climate changes, or lack of a Cow to milk, but because in much of the world people are incapable of extracting themselves from the hell they -- and no one else but they -- have created. Corrupt leaders rob and starve their own people; unbridled birth rates keep the people brutish and sick by design in places where, according to the gift catalogs, a couple of Rabbits or a Duck will propel them to a better lifestyle... And this is assuming the local strongman doesn't confiscate the animal and have a tasty dinner. It is also assuming that World Vision and Heifer actually produce what the donor has paid for.

Lies such as these organizations foist on the naive would be comical, were it not for the certainty that the animal "gifts" suffer and die miserably. How dare these so-called charities cause so much pain under the guise of altruism!? How do they get away with swindling the public and not paying taxes?