text: UPDATED: Radio24syv wanted to start a debate about the treatment of animals in Denmark's agriculture sector so its hosts killed a baby rabbit with a bicycle pump and ate it. 
   
   In order to demonstrate the “widespread hypocrisy in our relationship to animals”, Danish radio station Radio24syv killed a baby rabbit on air. 
   
   The baby rabbit, Allan, was killed by repeated blows to the head with a bicycle pump and Asger Juhl, one of the radio station's hosts, later skinned it with his children and planned to eat it as rabbit stew with his family and fellow host Kristoffer Eriksen. 
   
   "I hit it hard over the neck twice so that the cervical vertebrae fractured," Juhl told broadcaster TV 2. "I was instructed by a zookeeper from Aalborg Zoo who hits several baby rabbits every week [to feed] the snakes," he added. 
   
   After a strong backlash and calls for a boycott, the radio station defended its rabbit-killing stunt by saying that it achieved its exact purpose, namely exposing the hypocrisy of those who claim to be animal lovers but eat meat. 
   
   “We killed an animal to eat it. Thus what the hosts did [Sunday] morning resembled what most of us do every day when we stand in front of the supermarket's refrigerated counter. We don't kill animals ourselves – but we buy and eat animals that have had a miserable life. And animals that were killed under the exact same controlled settings as the rabbit in the studio. Without it provoking strong reactions and boycotts,” Radio24syv wrote in a long Facebook post 
   
   The station said by killing and eating Allan, they wanted to shine a light on the conditions faced by animals in Denmark's agriculture sector. 
   
   “Danish consumers allow chicken farms to keep 13 chickens per square meter. And they accept lengthy and painful transport of animals to the slaughterhouse. In Danish pig farms, 25.000 piglets die every day, because agriculture has bred pigs that give birth to more piglets than the sow can feed. This is wasted life,” a subsequent English-language version of their Facebook post read. 
   
   The station killed the rabbit over the objections of reality star Linse Kessler , who was brought on the programme as an outspoken advocate for animal rights. Kessler tried to grab the animal and chased radio host Asger Juhl around the studio several times before being asked to leave. 
   
   "They wanted to see if they could kill him during the last show or if they had gotten too attached to him," she said in a video clip on her Facebook page. 
   
   Kessler said she thought she was capable of wresting the animal from Juhl but feared it would die a more painful death if she grabbed it. 
   
   In her video message, she said that she understood the point Radio24syv was trying to make but stressed that Allan should not have been killed on air. 
   
   “I could see that the message is actually for the best of animals but I think it is wrong,” she said. 
   
   R.I.P lille Allan Posted by Linse Kessler on Monday, May 25, 2015 
   
   Story continues below… 
   
   News of the radio stunt quickly made its way to the international media, where several outlets drew parallels with the Copenhagen Zoo's controversial killing of the giraffe Marius last year which led to intense media coverage the world over. ||||| Radio24syv 
   
   ... 
   
   ing people of the plight of factory farm animals, but there is no justificat ion for what you did, and there never will be. By killing an animal in the name of saving animals, it is you who are the hypocrites ; but I suspect the irony is lost on such as you. I pity you that you live such lives devoid of any compassion . 
   
   
   
   "If you have men who will exclude any of God's creatures from the shelter of compassion and pity, you will have men who will deal likewise with their fellow men." 
   
   
   
   -- Saint Francis of Assisi 
   
   , you beat a rabbit to death as part of a publicity stunt. You have tried to justify it in the name of inform ||||| He's the Danish radio host who killed a baby rabbit live on air, in a stunt he said was designed to ignite debate about our meat eating habits. 
   
   Asger Juhl, a presenter on 24/7, hit the nine-week-old bunny, called Alan, repeatedly with an iron bike pump after a segment on the hypocrisy of animal rights campaigners who eat supermarket meat. 
   
   He's been widely criticised for the act. Now, Asger has told Newsbeat his side of the story. 
   
   Warning - this story contains themes some readers may find disturbing. 
   
   The host said: "I did it to show the hypocrisy in the debate. Many people are outraged by what I did, at the same time many of these people will eat meat. And when they eat meat, an animal will die. 
   
   "You cannot say: 'It's terrible to kill an animal' and then eat meat. These things are connected. 
   
   "And then we did it because we wanted to eat it. We ate it yesterday night. We had it for dinner. It was nice." 
   
   "Can I ask you a question? Do you see the problem in killing an animal and then eating it?" Asger Juhl 
   
   He continued: "We are animals and we eat meat. That's the way it is, and we have to be confronted with the fact that animals die when we eat meat. This is just a fact of life." 
   
   One side effect of the stunt has been a slew of threats towards the host and his family, most of which are too graphic to be printed. 
   
   When asked whether he expected the backlash, Asger responded: "No, not in this way. I've had death threats from Russia - people from Russia wanting to kill my children, Danish listeners and people threatening to kill me. I was not prepared for that. 
   
   "I knew, however, that we would spark debate. We were provocative, on purpose. Of course there are some misunderstandings we need to deal with. People are saying we didn't do it in a humane way - we did." 
   
   He added that he was taking the death threats seriously. 
   
   One of the key criticisms of the Asger is that he bludgeoned the rabbit with a bicycle pump. 
   
   He responded: "It was made of iron. 
   
   "What I did, I called up a zoo in Denmark - a guy who kills rabbits, to feed them to the predators in the zoo. He uses an iron stick. I didn't have a stick but I did have a bicycle pump made out of iron. It's the exact same thing. 
   
   "We held it in the back of its body, and I hit it very hard. And I hit it two times more, just to be sure. But it broke the neck of the rabbit the first time. 
   
   "This is the most humane way to kill a rabbit." 
   
   On air, the presenter described the death of the rabbit in detail. 
   
   "We were also talking about how I'm feeling. I wasn't ready for a bad experience, but it was actually a bad experience in some ways. I wasn't breathing normally, I was tense," Asger said. 
   
   "It was not a comfortable minute." 
   
   When we asked if he had been expecting a difficult experience, he said: "Well, I've killed animals before. Chickens, ducks, a lot of fish." 
   
   So why was this different? 
   
   "I don't know. It's been a while since I killed a mammal. It has these nice… It had these big black eyes. It was cute. It had long fur. Maybe that's something." 
   
   Another problem many listeners had with the stunt was the lack of sensitivity they saw in killing a rabbit on air, in a light hearted, almost comic segment. 
   
   Did Asger think that cheapened his message? No: "You know, what happened just before I killed the rabbit is that one of the [guests] tried to take the rabbit from me. 
   
   "This was a woman, very well known in Denmark. She chased me around the table in the studio. 
   
   "I'd never tried anything like it. It was a very comic moment as well as a serious one." 
   
   He went on: "Are you not allowed to laugh when you go to the zoo and watch the lions eat meat? 
   
   "Are you not allowed to laugh when you go to the zoo and watch the sea lions eat live fish? 
   
   "We weren't laughing because the rabbit died." 
   
   Asger insists he ate the rabbit after the stunt and fully intended to: "It had plenty of meat. We ate it yesterday. It wasn't a full meal for two people, but almost." 
   
   "It wasn't a baby rabbit. It was a young rabbit." 
   
   He went on to talk about skinning it in the garden in front of his young children. "They felt sorry for the rabbit, especially my daughter. But at the same time she was very interested in the process of that rabbit becoming dinner." 
   
   The host told Newsbeat his bosses have been fully behind him, despite the backlash: "I have the full support of the station. I'm going on air this afternoon and we're going to speak to the angry listeners." 
   
   And what does he think they'll say to him? "That I'm an idiot." 
   
   "I don't think I am. You know what? I killed an animal and I ate it. Did you have meat yesterday? Are you going to eat meat today? In that process an animal will die." 
   
   Having said that, he isn't planning on repeating the stunt: "I have no plans to kill other animals within the next couple of days, I must tell you." 
   
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target: – A Danish radio DJ chose a controversial way of drawing attention to what he sees as the flawed debate over animal welfare: He hit a 9-week-old rabbit named Allan three times with an iron bicycle pump while on the air Monday, then wrung its neck. Later, Asger Juhl of Radio24syv ate it for dinner. Angry listeners have since called for a boycott of the station, and much worse for Juhl himself, reports the BBC. "I did it to show the hypocrisy in the debate," he says. "Many people are outraged by what I did, at the same time many of these people will eat meat. And when they eat meat, an animal will die." Juhl says he consulted with Aalborg Zoo on a humane way to kill rabbits and was told it used an "iron stick." The zookeeper "hits several baby rabbits every week [to feed] the snakes," Juhl explains, per the Local. His employer is unapologetic. The New York Times quotes station editor-in-chief Jorgen Ramskov as saying the rabbit "was taken good care of, it had a nice life, and it was killed in a decent way." Animals endure "horrific suffering on their way to our dinner tables … without it invoking any strong reactions or calls for boycott," a station rep tells Sky News. Perhaps fueling the outcry on social media, per the Times: The station posted two videos on its Facebook page: a 20-second clip showing Juhl cradling and petting a very-alive Allan, and a 10-second clip showing what the station described as pieces of Allan, cooking in a pan. Those two parts are important, argued the station in a Facebook post yesterday. "We knew that we would be accused of provocation. But it is not an empty provocation; the presenters of the program ate the animal after killing it." (It's not the first controversial animal killing in Denmark.)