In yesterday’s edition we published a great editorial from our friends at the Sampson Independent in Clinton. The newspaper called out “so-called ‘vigils’ being held by the North Carolina Farmed Animal Save (NCFAS)” outside of Clinton’s Smithfield Processing Plant.
NCFAS is part of the larger Save Movement, which wants us to quit eating meat. “The long term goal of The Save Movement is for there to be Save groups at every slaughterhouse and to create a mass-based, grassroots movement for animal justice,” reads one passage on its website.
Don’t be fooled; one goal of this and other anti-meat groups — such as People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) and the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) — is to create a financial hardship for farmers and processors. They want meat, milk and eggs to cost more so we’ll buy less of them. In their ideal world, we would all be surviving on tofu and bean sprouts.
But as the Clinton newspaper argued so effectively, “every person has a right to decide for themselves whether they want to eat pork or not. No one else should decide that for you.”
My uncle, Merle Stalder of Falls City, Neb., raised cattle most of his farming career. He just sent me an email on this topic, pointing out that, “The people at PETA and HSUS have dealt real problems to the livestock industry. Their objective seems to be to stop ALL consumption of red meat.”
“Serious animal folks,” he added, “have an added expense just to counteract these organizations.”
An organization called HumaneWatch keeps track of the doublespeak from the HSUS. Among its findings: “The militantvegan agenda peddled by PETA and perpetuated by HSUS seeks to take away the choice of meat lovers everywhere by driving up the cost of animal products and banning meat outright — making it harder for people to afford or acquire their choice of food — or simply to scare people away from eating meat with pseudoscientific propaganda about how eating meat is supposedly bad for one’s health. (Never mind that the world’s oldest woman ate bacon daily until she passed away at 116 last year.)” But not only are these anti-meat groups dishonest, they are unkind. Over the years, this column has reported numerous examples of PETA’s antics, including the time it traumatized children by handing out “Unhappy Meals” to children at Mc-Donald’s.
They were made to resemble the restaurant chain’s popular “Happy Meal.” But inside, children found a plastic bloody chicken.
Then late last year, PETA appropriated the real problem of human sexual abuse in a tawdry ad that likens livestock to abused women.
According to an article on Huffington Post, “The ad begins with women sharing what seems to be traumatizing stories of rape. ‘One man held me down, while another man touched me,’ the ad begins as various women each recite a line.”
“Everything about the ad … suggests that the message is about women who have experienced sexual assault,” Rebecca Shapiro of Huffington Post continued. “But then the ad takes a hard turn, and it suddenly becomes clear that the women are representing [PETA’s interpretation of] the feelings of cows and pigs born into food industries.”
Then the liberal online news organization includes tweets from women responding to PETA’s ad: “[N]o survivor of sexual assault should have to go through their trauma being compared to an animal’s when we’ve already been dehumanized,” one woman wrote.
Another wrote, “This is awful, and insensitive. You continue to spit in the faces of marginalized and victimized groups to push your message.”
Yet a third wrote, “As if rape/sexual assault victims haven’t been dehumanized enough, PETA goes and compares them to animals.”
But no matter how much criticism these anti-meat groups receive, they will continue with their hateful tactics. Their passion for animals is unchecked by either intellect or common sense.
Not only that, they’re just mean.
Read the original article here.
