October 2 is World Farm Animals Day designed to mark, in the words of FarmUSA, “the suffering of ten billion innocent, sentient animals raised for food…” Activists demonstrating on October 2 will be demanding
- Ban of veal crates
- Ban of sow gestation stalls
- Ban of battery cages
- Ban of forced molting of laying hens
- Enactment of Downed Animals Protection Act
- Strict enforcement of Humane Methods of Slaughter Act
- Phasing out subsidies for large factory farms
- Strict environmental pollution regulation of factory farms
- Strict control of antibiotics in factory farms
- Choice of plant-based foods in the National School Lunch menus
You do have to appreciate the rhetoric espoused by FARM. At their website they reprint a speech by Alex Hershaft which is priceless:
In the 1950′s, General Dwight Eisenhower warned America of the rising political clout and awesome destructive impacts of the military-industrial complex. …
In the 1970′s, leaders of the vegetarian movement warned America of a much more formidable national threat – the meat-industrial complex. Like its predecessor, the meat-industrial complex feeds human greed by killing living beings and destroying their environment. But, unlike its predecessor, the meat-industrial complex does not wait for wars or other diplomatic failures. Driven by grain surpluses, government subsidies, deceptive promotional practices, and consumer apathy, it carries out its deadly mission every minute of every day of every year, even as we speak. Its destructive power boggles the mind.
That would make a great X-Files episode.
If you want to participate by protesting animal agriculture, the FarmUSA site does provide some helpful slogans though a few are a bit confusing such as “Stop Exportation of Factory Farming!” Is this a Monty Python gag? Help me, I’m being exportated! Others include, “Be Kind To Animals — Don’t Eat Them!”, “Nonviolence Begins at Breakfast”, and that old standby, “It’s Time To End Animal Slavery.”
I also can’t help but notice FarmUSA has a picture of a billboard on its site showing a cat and a pig asking “Which do you pet and which do you eat?” I’ve often asked the same thing to my cats who are very nice to my wife and I, but they keep murdering poor innocent bats who get trapped in our house (let me tell you how much fun it is to come home to find a chewed up bat on your floor). I hope they don’t come to take my felines friends away.
