Letters to the Editor
vasumurti
Published Letters: 108 Editor's Choice: 2
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another reason I'm a Democrat
[Read the article: Why do Republicans hate puppies?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]"Why do Republicans hate puppies?" Animal rights may be regarded as a progressive cause. The animal rights and vegetarian movements consist mainly of secular progressives.
Kathleen Marquardt, founder of Putting People First, an anti-animal rights group, admits as much in her 1993 book, Animal Scam: The Beastly Abuse of Human Rights. In her book, Marquardt depicts animal rights activists as "terrorists," repeats the old myth that Hitler was a "vegetarian," etc.
Marquardt writes that the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) "now encourages vegetarianism, the banning of fur, and the eventual end to all animal research, not just ‘cruel’ animal research." Marquardt writes that the Humane Society now supports vegetarianism.
According to Marquardt, "The typical animal rights activist is a white woman making about $30,000 a year. She is most likely a schoolteacher, nurse, or government worker. She usually has a college degree or even an advanced degree, is in her thirties or forties, and lives in a city."
Marquardt cites studies indicating that animal rights activists tend to identify with liberal causes such as feminism and environmentalism. "Every year," writes the Reverend Andrew Linzey, "I receive hundreds of anguished letters from Christians who are so distressed by the insensitivity to animals shown by mainstream churches that they have left them or are on the verge of doing so." It is not surprising, therefore, that Marquardt reports that "Most activists share a bias against Western civilization and its Judeo-Christian foundations."
According to Marquardt, the "political clout" of the animal rights movement "is surprisingly bipartisan. But most of the leading politicians working with the animal rights movement are liberal Democrats." Marquardt mentions Senator Barbara Boxer of California, Nevada Congressman Jim Bilbray, Charlie Rose of North Carolina, Tom Lantos and Gerry Studds.
Marquardt admits, however, that "some Republicans are animal rightists, too. Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole of Kansas often supports animal rights causes—except, of course, those pertaining to cattle, a major business in Kansas. Senator Robert Smith of New Hampshire was a founder of the Congressional Friends of Animals. Bob Dornan of California, one of the most conservative House members, is an animal rights advocate—he cosponsored legislation banning the use of animals in testing cosmetics and received a PETA award. And Manhattan Congressman Bill Green promoted legislation that would have shut down over 90 million acres of federal land to hunting, fishing, and trapping."
Marquardt states further that "Although he’s not an elected official, a conservative political figure who, surprisingly, is on the other side is G. Gordon Liddy, author Will and a key figure in the 1972 Watergate uproar. When I went on Liddy’s radio show, he and PETA’s Ingrid Newkirk greeted each other with hugs and kisses and lots of warm words.
"With allies in both political parties and across the ideological spectrum," concludes Marquardt, "the animal rights movement has been able to score some great successes, regardless of which party controls the White House or Capitol Hill."
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Tigers don't belong in zoos
[Read the article: Tigers don't belong in zoos]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]In an episode from the original Twilight Zone series entitled "People Are Alike All Over," Roddy McDowell played an astronaut imprisoned in a zoo on the planet Mars.
The bottom line: Is it ethical to do to other animals what we would never do to other human beings?
I agree with PETA: Animals are not ours to eat, wear, experiment on, or use for entertainment.
Animals belong in the wild.
As for the argument that zoos are necessary to preserve endangered species, because animal habitats are being destroyed due to human population growth, such destruction would be minimal if we humans switched to a vegetarian or vegan diet.
Half the water consumed in the U.S., for example, goes to irrigate land growing feed and fodder for livestock. Huge amounts of water are also used to wash away their excrement. U.S. livestock produce twenty times as much excrement as does the entire human population, creating sewage which is ten to several hundred times more concentrated than raw domestic sewage. Animal wastes cause ten times as much water pollution than does the U.S. human population; the meat industry causes three times as much harmful organic water pollution than the rest of the nation's industries combined.
Meat producers are the number one industrial polluters in our nation, contributing to half the water pollution in the United States. The water that goes into a thousand-pound steer could float a destroyer. It takes 25 gallons of water to produce a pound of wheat, but 2,500 gallons to produce a pound of meat. If these costs weren't subsidized by the American taxpayers, hamburger meat would be $35 per pound!
The burden of subsidizing the California meat industry costs taxpayers $24 billion annually. Livestock producers are California's biggest consumers of water. Every tax dollar the state doles out to livestock producers costs taxpayers over seven dollars in lost wages, higher living costs and reduced business income. Seventeen western states have enough water supplies to support economies and populations twice as large as the present.
Overgrazing of cattle leads to topsoil erosion, turning once-arable land into desert. We lose four million acres of topsoil each year and 85 percent of this loss is directly caused by raising livestock. To replace the soil we've lost, we're destroying our forests. Since 1967, the rate of deforestation in the U.S. has been one acre every five seconds. For each acre cleared in urbanization, seven are cleared for grazing or growing livestock feed.
One-third of all raw materials in the U. S. are consumed by the livestock industry and it takes three times as much fossil fuel energy to produce meat than it does to produce plant foods. A report on the energy crisis in Scientific American warned: "The trends in meat consumption and energy consumption are on a collision course."
On a vegetarian or vegan diet, the world could easily support a population several times its present size. The world's cattle alone consume enough to feed over 8.7 billion humans.
Again, I agree with PETA: Animals are not ours to eat, wear, experiment on, or use for entertainment.