Tel Aviv: Naked activists mark Animal Rights Day

An exhibit featuring naked activists covered in saran wrap was held in central Tel Aviv on Monday, as part of the 11th annual International Animal Rights Day events, during which activists across the world "remember the innocent nonhuman victims of human tyranny and call for the recognition of their basic moral rights."

International Animal Rights Day was officially marked on December 10.

The exhibit, in which the activists were bunched together to symbolize frozen meat, was organized by Anonymous for Animal Rights to protest the "horrors" of the egg and industrial meat industries.

A handcuffed female activist waved a sign reading, "The right to move freely" in protest of the confinement of egg laying hens in "battery cages", which, according to Anonymous, have already been banned in 30 countries and are expected to be entirely banned in the European Union by 2012.

Another activist carried a sign saying, "The right to be free of violence," in protest of the "daily violence animals are subjected to in the meat industry – be it the chopping of limbs without anesthesia or the breaking of bones while cramming animals into trucks."

Arbel Barak, organizer of the exhibit in Tel Aviv, said, "All living creatures, including humans, are equal when it comes to pain, fear and suffering. We would all suffer equally from having our limbs severed or from being starved inside a cramped industrial cage for a long period of time.

"Our intelligence does not justify abusing creatures that are considered inferior," he added.

Later Monday, animal rights activists held a similar rally at Jerusalem's Paris Square in protest against the Agriculture Ministry's plan to build "battery cages" using "hundreds of millions of the taxpayers' shekels."

The "battery cages", Anonymous says, violate Israel's Animal Welfare Law.