Incidentally, Canada is also actively engaged in clubbing hundreds of baby seals to death for their coats. Of course, this has had no significant impact on the seal population and honestly most of them would have gotten eaten by polar bears anyway, but seals are CUTE so clearly PETA needs to ignore the animals going extinct every single day and devote their time and money to sending our Government petitions to take the livelihood away from all our seal hunters.
Also, killing rats is a problem now? I believe some of those pesticides are going to be marketed to people who make a living by killing unwanted rodents; they're an invasive species.
PETA needs to get it's priorities straight, methinks.
I mean... you can't care about it if you are dead...
*humming*
"Someday III will woork with animals,
All the tests I'm gonna do,
Aall my stuuffs compleetely natural,
And when we're done we'll boil 'em down for glue."
Also, aaaaww, cute little snakes.
Pita Inn has great food. I recomend the beef shawarma.
Go figure, my first post on this site would be on a thread involving PETA
PETA is not a politically correct organization. But the controversy surrounding them should not overshadow this truth:
We must abandon the consumption of animals for the good of our planet.
A Scary Fact to Consider:
A 2006 United Nations report found that the meat industry produces more greenhouse gases than all the SUVs, Hummers, cars, trucks, planes, and ships in the world combined.
The science and research to support this much is clear: When someone adopts a vegan diet, that person does more than save the lives of animals. That person helps save the future of our planet.
This goes beyond love for animals. It speaks to the love you can express for all life on Earth.
Natalie, you bring up some interesting points about the carbon footprint of livestock raising. But we should remember that this worldwide practice introduces greenhouse gases into the atmosphere at an artificially accelerated rate that is overhwelmingly responsible for our climate change dilemma.
Harnessing the large amounts of methane gas produced by livestock seems like a well-intentioned patch to this problem. Unfortunately, the majority of meat production comes from factory farms that produce so much waste that it is simply more feasible and cheaper for them to dispose of the colossal amounts of waste into the water supply.
Even if every livestock farm practiced organic farming, its food production practices would still consume over ten times as much land resources and hundreds of times more water to produce the same caloric output. This is not to mention that they would not be able to keep up with the current (and growing) market demand for meat.
I do agree that we also need to end our dependency on fossil fuels, and switch to a form of clean renewable energy that DOESN'T cause food prices for everyone to skyrocket (cough cough biodiesel). But meanwhile, going vegan is the quickest, cleanest, and most powerful way to make a positive impact on our global environment.
As a former meat-eater myself, I'm very familar with the arguments in favor of broccoli/carrot rights and the importance of pleasing our tastebuds. But when someone takes a serious look at the many good arguments to go vegan or even veggie, that person can then fairly judge which arguments truly matter most.
Courtesy of PETA (staying on the thread topic
)
http://youtube.com/watch?v=PNvPtyh-sDQ
And if you don't want to take PETA's word for it, but have more free time, this is a must-watch:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=GhxKnys7Ryw
I really think it's too bad that PETA have made some of the PR mistakes that they did. The "Holocaust on your Plate" campaign involved and required more serious ethical discussion/explanation than could possibly be fit into a flyer or poster.
The campaign where they visited elementary schools and handed out flyers to kids in schoolyards was also something that didn't seem right to me.
PETA has done a lot of great work spreading awareness about animal rights, documenting animal cruelty, etc.
I just wish they would use more common sense. No one likes to have their race so simplistically compared to livestock. No one likes to be stalked and harassed. And certainly, no one likes to be ordered on how to raise their kids.
As for pets (who I actually do prefer to call animal companions
), I think better measures need to be taken to control their population and better protect their rights and safety.
But I don't believe total separation from animals is the ideal. I believe there is a lot that animals can teach us.
For eight and a half wonderful years, I had a friend who jumped onto my bed to wake me up every morning, played with me, gave me company in good times and bad, and who loved me despite my MANY faults, and no matter how rotten, weird, or digusting a person I felt I was. I miss that silly rabbit.