Is it any wonder that commentary like this would appear in the Los Angeles Times (registration required)?
A ranch owner in San Diego County disposes of 30,000 nonproductive egg-laying hens by feeding them into a wood chipper. Live hens are dumped into the shredder, some likely to hit feet first, some breast first. Sound like a scene from a horror movie? It's a true story. One would surely expect the ranchers to be prosecuted, but California humane slaughter laws do not cover unproductive egg-laying hens.
Spent hens" are often packed into containers and bulldozed into the ground — buried alive. Or they are often gassed using carbon dioxide distributed unevenly among tens of thousands of birds; it's common for them to die slow, painful deaths.(From a city girl’s perspective, the only crime committed here is not putting these chickens into the human food chain in the poultry section at Ralph’s.)
Now, I have nothing against people who try to prevent cruelty to animals and this is an interesting article. I just wanted to point out the language used in the first two paragraphs.
Notice the unspoken assertion: just like Saddam did with his countrymen. Which leads to the assertion: such ranchers are just like Saddam. And then to the next one: chickens are equal to humans.
Maybe I’m paranoid, but when PETA activists (nutjobs) are scolding recording artists who happen to don real fur--notice the condescension in the PETA statements--and when ELF activists (nutjobs) are setting fire to SUV dealerships, paranoia seems to be the appropriate personality disorder to chose.
When people die and homes are destroyed because “environmentalists” care more about animal habitats than human ones, we sensible humans have a right to be nervous and should watch these people closely.
(Sidenote: I’d just love to watch what would happen if some PETA person threw paint on some black woman’s white mink. It would be ugly.)
Enviro-whackjobs: the earth isn’t your mother and the government isn’t your father. In the book which I know you don’t read, it says that men were given dominion over the earth. In case words like “dominion” are too big for you, this means that humans run things on this planet, up to and including the planet. Not the other way around.
And I’ll be damned if I’m going back living like my ancestors (and some of my contemporary kinsmen).
Are we clear? Good. Now that we have that straightened out, I think I’ll have a little baked chicken for dinner tonight.
UPDATE: The title was bothering me, so I changed it.
