Sometimes you have to travel a thousand miles or more to learn what you should already know and worry about while still home.
Connie and I were so educated when we attended an animal welfare seminar on the East Coast recently. The sponsors and presenters spent a good amount of time making sure we understood the difference between everyday “animal welfare” and the “animal rights” agenda.
I have long been amazed by the no-brain thinking of some of the so-called animal rights activists. We seem to be free from most such activisms here in N’West Iowa, but it is easy to connect with them in the cities. I bumped into a PETA protester while attending a big-name circus performance in one of our nation’s largest cities. The man was walking back and forth, swinging a huge sign protesting the use of elephants in the circus performance.
“What do you think the owners should do with the elephants,” I asked.
“They should take them out and shoot them,” the protester replied.” Then, without a pause he added, “the elephants would be much happier.”
Happier? How would the huge beasts know they were happier since they would all be dead.
Another time, in another city, I was approached by a woman protester who asked me where I lived. When I told her Iowa, she demanded to know if there were any pigs being raised in our part of the state.
“Of course,” I told her.
“In confinement buildings?” she asked.
“Most of them,” I replied.
“You should go back to Iowa and let all of them go,” she said.
It was too much uninformed conversation for me, and I couldn’t answer her. I just walked away envisioning thousands of pigs running free through our Osceola County fields, in our yards and on our highways.
But back to the seminar sponsored by the Cavalry Group which promotes itself as being dedicated to defending and protecting all animal enterprises. Animal welfare, says the Cavalry Group, correctly endorses the responsible use of animals for companionship, sport, education, entertainment, meaningful medical research and food.
Animal rights actions, on the other hand, is wrongly based on ideology or emotion and not science or fact. Animal rights extremists use bullying tactics and coercion, says the Cavalry Group, in the hopes of eventually eliminating all animals from human contact, care or use.
The animal rights groups are cleverly using the local, state and federal legislative system to secure several goals, including:
- The abolishment of all pet ownership such as our dog Scruffy, who shared our lives for 17 years and Duffer, who was Connie and my best friend for 14 years.
- Eliminating the exhibiting of all animals at zoos, fairs, circuses, rodeos and even fish in public aquariums,
- Ending the use of all horse-drawn carriages in cities or parks.
- The abolishment of all hunting, trapping and fishing.
- Abolishing selling any fur, leather or sheep skin shoes or clothing.
- Eliminating 4-H and FFA.
- And most important to those of us living in rural America, the complete shutting down of the animal livestock industry including all beef, pork, poultry, dairy and egg production.
Most of the nation’s highest profile “animal rights” organizations — such as the Humane Society, PETA and the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals — while claiming to be cash-strapped animal protection agencies, don’t own a single shelter, according to the Cavalry Group. Most spend little of their donations on animals. Instead, they budget large amounts of money on lobbying, administrative salaries, additional fundraising and deceptive legislation to take away your and my rights to own animals for pleasure or profit or to breed animals.
And some of those animals, many being raised humanely here in Iowa, are the ones that will be food on dinner tables sometime soon.
Read the original article by Peter W. Wagner at nwestiowa.com here.
