Iowa folks,
I have to share this extraordinary op-ed run today in the Iowa City Press-Citizen, and urge you to send positive feedback. The Press Citizen takes letters to the editor at opinion@press-citizen.com
Letters to the editor will keep the story alive on the editorial page.
Or you can post a comment at the end of the article on the webpage:
http://tinyurl.com/yq3brm
Here's the article:
Celebrate kindness to animals with National (Veggie) Hot Dog Day
Erica Meier and Will McBride
Guest Opinion
Food defines our holidays, and it's often the centerpiece of our social gatherings. Some industry groups even have dedicated certain days to honoring their specific food categories, such as National Hot Dog Day on July 18. In recent years, however, a growing number of consumers are re-evaluating their dietary choices after discovering where their food comes from. In response to industry-inspired food "holidays," a new type of holiday has emerged, seeking to foster the understanding that what we eat does matter, especially to animals: National (Veggie) Hot Dog Day.
Today marks the second annual National (Veggie) Hot Dog Day. Events are taking place across the country -- including a veggie hot dog giveaway at College Green park in Iowa City -- each one aiming to expose the routine miseries endured by millions of pigs raised and killed for food each year in the United States. These animals, unlike dogs and cats, have virtually no laws protecting them from harm, which enables animal factories to treat them in nearly any manner they see fit, no matter how cruel.
Although many people are likely to envision pigs living outdoors and freely rolling around in the mud, the reality is that most pigs raised for food will never set foot outside. Instead, they are confined inside massive factory farms, mired in filth and unable to escape the lingering stench of ammonia.
Female pigs raised for breeding spend months at a time in crates so narrow they can barely even move. They are confined in what the industry refers to as a "gestation crate" -- a metal enclosure that is just slightly wider than her body. Immobilized inside these crates, mother pigs can't even turn around, let alone comfortably lay down. Such restrictive confinement often leads to injuries, lameness, stress and depression. Reduced to mere piglet-producing machines, they spend their lives in a constant cycle of impregnation and birth while being shuffled from crate to crate until their exhausted bodies can no longer produce a profitable number of piglets. Then they are shipped off to slaughter.
Many experts agree that gestation crates cause tremendous suffering, and welfare concerns have already prompted the European Union to ban their use altogether. Gestation crates continue to dominate the U.S. pig industry, though consumers are voicing their opposition and with growing success. In 2002, voters in Florida approved a ballot initiative prohibiting the use of gestation crates statewide, and residents of Arizona followed suit in 2006. And just last month, Oregon's state legislature passed a bill also banning gestations crates.
Despite these important steps forward, millions of female pigs in the U.S. still remain essentially motionless inside archaic metal enclosures -- and as cruel as these crates are, they are far from the only source of suffering in the pig industry.
Shortly after birth, piglets are taken away from their mothers and have their ears cut, teeth trimmed, tails chopped off and males are castrated -- all without pain relief. They are moved into indoor "fattening" pens often built on top of manure pits where they'll spend the first and only six months of their lives. As the months pass, they become increasingly overcrowded and frustrated from lack of exercise and mental stimulation.
As a former animal control officer in our nation's capital, I am certain that if the dogs and cats we welcome into our homes were subjected to similar abuses -- intensively confined inside tiny crates, unable to even turn around or mutilated without painkillers -- it would likely result in criminal prosecution.
National (Veggie) Hot Dog Day isn't just a celebration of vegetarian food. It's about recognizing that we can each make compassionate choices every time we sit down to eat. Leaving meat off our plates doesn't mean skimping on flavor, of course. Rather, it simply means dining on the cruelty-free versions of our favorite foods, like veggie dogs.
Each of us can help end animal abuse and make the world a kinder place for us all, one meal at a time. Now that's something worth celebrating.
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Erica Meier is the executive director of Compassion Over Killing, a nonprofit animal advocacy organization. The Web site is www.cok.net.
Will McBride is president of the Farm Animal Welfare Network, a student-run organization at the University of Iowa.
(End of Press-Citizen article)
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Date: Wed Jul 18 22:40:27 2007
