USA Today - Animal rights groups pick up momentum

[kjs]

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2008-01-27-animal-activists_N.htm

 

Got this in today's DawnWatch. A great newsletter for keeping up to date on the latest in vegan / animal rights news. She also has a new book out about animal rights.

 

www.dawnwatch.com

 

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The huge page 3 story on the animal rights movement, by Larry Copeland, opens with:

 

"The growing influence of animal rights activists increasingly is affecting daily life, touching everything from the foods Americans eat to what they study in law school, where they buy their puppies and even whether they should enjoy a horse-drawn carriage ride in New York's Central Park.

 

"Animal activist groups such as the Humane Society of the United States and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) say they are seeing a spike in membership as their campaigns spread. "

 

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2008-01-27-animal-activists_N.htm

[Odidnetne]

"There's a real danger when we allow a very small minority of activists to dictate procedures that should be used to raise animals for food."

 

You've got to be kidding me, right? Thanks to our ridiculously large gap between the rich and poor in the states, it's a very small minority of people who are dictating how animals are raised for food right now.

[beforewisdom]

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2008-01-27-animal-activists_N.htm

 

Got this in today's DawnWatch. A great newsletter for keeping up to date on the latest in vegan / animal rights news. She also has a new book out about animal rights.

 

www.dawnwatch.com

 

 

And if you don't want anymore email, you can read the "newsletter" via the RSS feed, which you can pipe into a MyYahoo, MSN, or iGoogle page:

 

http://beforewisdom.com/blog/?p=38

[Guest]

"There's a real danger when we allow a very small minority of activists to dictate procedures that should be used to raise animals for food."

 

You've got to be kidding me, right? Thanks to our ridiculously large gap between the rich and poor in the states, it's a very small minority of people who are dictating how animals are raised for food right now.

 

Actually I think its the poor/average majority dictating how animals are raised for food. Its average Joe that wants to pay $1 per lb for chicken...the rich man only listens because thats what keeps customers coming. When you look at those who do buy more expensive organic meat I think you'd find they are mostly all in the upper middle class or higher. I know very few average income folks that buy organic anything outside of environmentalists. Everyone else wants stuff cheap. As for our income gap I'd say its relatively small once you take out the super duper rich that only makes up less than 0.2% of the population. Remove them and we're pretty much just like most other modern nations. Poor countries are much worse...where the average person is really poor...the poor is only a little more poor and the rich is like the average American...and the really rich is of course really rich.

Anyhow this is part of the reason why I support most of what PETA does. We are the minority and the general public thinks we're stronger than our numbers would suggest. We are much smaller of a minority than even those under the poverty line, any race in America...but we even have larger numbers than the very rich...just not quite as much influence yet. But extremely vocal groups that scare the rich make our numbers seem larger and actually make our numbers larger. I'm happy things like this are being covered by the news and I hope it keeps happening.

[Odidnetne]

"There's a real danger when we allow a very small minority of activists to dictate procedures that should be used to raise animals for food."

 

You've got to be kidding me, right? Thanks to our ridiculously large gap between the rich and poor in the states, it's a very small minority of people who are dictating how animals are raised for food right now.

 

Actually I think its the poor/average majority dictating how animals are raised for food. Its average Joe that wants to pay $1 per lb for chicken...the rich man only listens because thats what keeps customers coming. When you look at those who do buy more expensive organic meat I think you'd find they are mostly all in the upper middle class or higher. I know very few average income folks that buy organic anything outside of environmentalists. Everyone else wants stuff cheap. As for our income gap I'd say its relatively small once you take out the super duper rich that only makes up less than 0.2% of the population. Remove them and we're pretty much just like most other modern nations. Poor countries are much worse...where the average person is really poor...the poor is only a little more poor and the rich is like the average American...and the really rich is of course really rich.

Anyhow this is part of the reason why I support most of what PETA does. We are the minority and the general public thinks we're stronger than our numbers would suggest. We are much smaller of a minority than even those under the poverty line, any race in America...but we even have larger numbers than the very rich...just not quite as much influence yet. But extremely vocal groups that scare the rich make our numbers seem larger and actually make our numbers larger. I'm happy things like this are being covered by the news and I hope it keeps happening.

 

It's the average/poor dictating that only in the sense that it's an illusion that they have a say in how food gets produced. Most people don't even have a clue of what a factory farm looks like, or reasons as to why it's bad for everything. The only "choice" they're showing is that they want "cheap meat", and let the rich people take care of it from there, which is when I think things start to go bad, when you just let other people take care of everything for you.

[Guest]

I think if most people were aware of how everything is done they'd say oh...thats sad and gross. Then they'd ask how much would it cost to not do this...then they'd say keep doing it with their purchases since nobody is gonna pay $40+ per lb for beef which is what it would cost if it weren't for subsidies and cruel practices.