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Sparkle (6)
My sixteen year old daughter, who is the Head Vegetarian of our tribe, recently received a packet of propaganda information from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA). It was a sharp, well-put together production, complete with sweet, cartoon stickers of baby chicks proclaiming "I am not a nugget," and photos of bloody, maimed animals suffering on factory farms. I gathered from the overall tone, style, and shininess, that this information packet was specifically targeted at teens and tweens.
Obligitory Disclaimer: I fully support the three of my teens who are vegetarians, both in philosophy and in the kitchen. I think animal abuse is reprehensible, and factory farms are, in general, obscene in their treatment of the animals they raise and slaughter. Due to the mass runoff of animal excrement factory farms are one of the leading factors in the pollution of our air and water systems - factory farmed animals produce over 100 times the waste that the human population does.
Now that that's out of the way and I've shown I'm not the Death Angel of the Animal Kingdom, I have to say I'm also not a fan of PETA. For one thing, they're extremists, which is a term that just makes my left eye start twitching. Extremists are dangerous. They’re the ones bombing abortion clinics, and serving cyanide grape juice to their cult members, and storing Spam and automatic weapons for the end times that are right around the corner. I am not saying that PETA is doing these things, of course - especially not the Spam part. I am just saying that extremism in any realm tends to be dangerous and unbalanced.
Extremists, in my experience, are terrible at putting themselves in others' shoes. PETA has notoriously compared the suffering of beef cattle to the suffering of African slaves, and Jewish concentration camp victims. In their sentimental anthropomorphizing of the entire animal kingdom, they place equal value on all creatures. So presumably if you ever have to choose between saving a child and saving a chicken, there is no correct answer. Good luck with that.
I also have a problem with PETA’s misrepresentation of some of the facts. For instance, their avowal that “chicken eggs come from chicken periods” is worrisome. PETA? Chickens aren’t mammals. They don’t have periods. To break it down , chickens don’t shed blood and tissue from the lining of a uterus on a monthly basis. That fun event is miles away from the act of cracking an egg into a mixing bowl. Clearly this statement is intended for shock value. Which, come to think of it, most of their statements seem to be.
I don't appreciate PETA trying to recruit my underage daughter. Her healthy growth is not their responsibility, it's mine. And while I suppose it's always possible that they'd be willing to take legal and financial responsibility for any health problems she might develop from following their espoused vegan lifestyle in these formative years, I'm not holding my breath.
I’ve told my daughter that she can’t go vegan until she’s grown and gone. As an extremely busy working mom I am not willing to be responsible for micromanaging her diet to ensure that she’s getting enough protein and B vitamins, which she mostly gets now from dairy and eggs. I am, however, willing to buy these things from local, organic, humanely produced sources whenever it’s feasible to do so. I think it’s a worthy goal to make sure that no creature suffers unnecessarily so that we can enjoy cheese omelets on Sunday morning.
I’m a big fan of buying locally from small farmers. Buying sustainable, fair trade, organically produced food is, in my opinion, the best way to eradicate the cruelty of factory farms. If everyone bought just ten percent of their meat and dairy this way over the long haul factory farmers would be forced to either go out of business or drastically overhaul their treatment of the animals they handle. When people speak with their wallets, the big guys listen.
Or we could all ditch dairy, eggs, and meat like PETA wants us to, and subsist on products made from soybeans - the mass production of which is polluting our soil with chemical fertilizers, draining it of productive potential, and flooding our grocery stores with genetically modified products.
But that’s a topic for another day.
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