Animal Advocacy LTE on two separate days in FWST

[Guest guest]

Please watch for animal related stories in the local newspapers. When you see one, write a LTE in response. It's a nearly sure-fire way to get the animal rights position to be published by the news media. If we can not get animal rights on the front page, we can make our views heard in the Letters to the Editor. The LTE are the second most widely read page of the newspaper.

See below LTE published on two separate days in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. Even though one anti-animal LTE was published on May 31, he was clearly an extremist nut-case as well as the minority opinion. All the better for animals that his drivel was published. Margaret

Sunday, May 27th LTE

http://www.star-telegram.com/244/story/115638.html

 

Rights for primates?

I read with considerable interest the May 16 commentary by Jonathan Balcombe, "Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for apes?" It was nice to see a Star-Telegram commentary with real, cutting-edge thought.

A truly ethical society would consider it unconscionable to relegate feeling sentients to a lifetime of incarceration and abuse in a gulag of research labs, circuses and roadside exhibitions with no legal protection or recourse.

We don't treat the worst humans who ever lived this way. Why should we feel free to do it to God's innocents, who never committed any crime? The fact that we do requires us to ask what it says about us, as a nation and as a species. Some soul-searching and a good deal of change are in order.

-- Margaret Morin, Plano

Thanks for your informative May 16 commentary on rights for primates. It made good points about intelligence alone not being a qualifying factor for rights.

All animals should have basic rights of freedom from torture and abuse, but our laws currently don't cover animals, even primates, which are so much like us in intelligence and social partnerships.

-- Peggy Henger,Garland

Thursday, May 31st LTE

http://www.star-telegram.com/244/story/120586.html

Glorification of animal death?

I must respond to Saturday's front-page photograph and inside article about a boy who killed a giant wild hog ("Boy, 11, bags half-ton hog"). The senseless slaughter of innocent animals by children is hardly news that our newspapers should glorify.

The article said the boy chased the pig for three hours, shooting it eight times with a pistol and "finishing it off with a point-blank shot." The chase occurred under the watchful eyes of three adults armed with high-powered rifles, just in case the pig "decided to charge" the boy. If the boy pursued the pig for three hours, the pig was obviously intent on escaping, not attacking the hunters.

If we, as a society, continue to support and endorse the willful killing of innocent animals that pose no immediate threat to us, is it any wonder that we have become a nation involved in killing innocent people in other countries that pose no immediate threat to us?

And surely the irony of the boy's attendance at a "Christian" academy is not to be overlooked. Is chasing down and killing defenseless animals a "Christian" value? Americans need to take a closer look at the ramifications of endorsing the "sport" of game hunting.

-- Aimee Hurst Bozarth, Fort Worth

Hmm. The "monster pig" in the story about an 11-year-old Alabama boy "bagging" a half-ton hog wasn't the wild boar but, rather, the boy.

The precocious lad killed his first deer at age 5. Under the tutelage of his dad and two guides, he filled the boar with eight .50-caliber shots and chased the exhausted, wounded creature for three hours before he could get close enough for the fatal shot.

"It's a good accomplishment," he was quoted as saying. "I probably won't ever kill anything else that big."

Oh, why not? Go for the vanishing elephants, or whales maybe.

Why must too many men teach their sons that killing animals, especially those bigger than humans, is a manly achievement? That killing any living thing is?

The front-page photo of the boy leaning over the slain boar was obscene.

And it's truly sad that a natural wonder -- a boar or a fish or an elephant that has lived in peace to grow large and old -- is memorialized by killing it. If fathers and sons "bond" on nature trips, why can't they do it with a camera instead of killing an animal that was just minding its business and never even charged its armed pursuers?

The boy was said to be on the honor roll at Christian Heritage Academy. Did he ever learn to "do unto others"? The species isn't specified in that instruction.

The boy only did and thinks as he was taught. Rewarding and lionizing him for this slaughter is why fewer lions are left in the wild. I thank the Star-Telegram for exposing the Stone Age mentality among us.

-- Carole Douglas, Fort Worth

In your Monday story ("Hunter traveled world for game"), you gave the brave, great white hunter Don Corley what he wanted most: publicity. I don't understand why you would glorify this man for killing beautiful animals.

If he enjoys killing so much, he should volunteer for Iraq, where the fight would be fair. His target might shoot back.

-- Robert Miller, Fort Worth

I saw that the animal rights advocates came out in support of Jonathan Balcombe's May 16 commentary, "Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for apes?" (See Sunday letters "Rights for primates?")

I noted with some interest that no one mentioned that the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine that Balcombe represents is essentially a front group for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, the most onerous of radical animal rights groups.

Sure, let's give human rights to apes, then hogs, cattle, chickens, dogs and cats. Then these radical nuts at PETA or the Humane Society of the United States can slowly and incrementally take away all your rights as an animal owner and consumer of animal products. Make no mistake -- that's their ultimate aim, and they're making inroads in that direction because of an uninformed populace.

Most recently, they've gotten laws passed in Florida and Arizona to ban the use of farrowing crates in hog production farms, even though those states have very few pork producers. Why? To set legal precedent before they attack the pork producers in the Midwestern states.

They realize (and you should, too) that the biggest losses that farmers have on hog farms are the deaths of young pigs caused by sows lying on them and crushing them. The use of farrowing crates prevents most of those losses and keeps pork affordable for the average consumer. They intend to force Americans to become vegans by causing the price of meat to be outside the average family's ability to afford it.

Sure, support these zealots -- and then start eating tofu and wearing plastic shoes!

-- Bill Hughett, Springtown