PETA event shows class on all sides
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Dan Faas
As a human, I primarily concern myself with the affairs of my fellow human beings. I tend to live my life according to that rule.
So I made a pretty uncharacteristic move when I decided to attend People For the Ethical Treatment of Animals’ Animal Liberation event this past Thursday to hear Dan Mathews, PETA’s vice president, speak and answer questions. It was so uncharacteristic, in fact, that when I told several friends I was going to a PETA event, they thought I was just grabbing dinner at the Pita Pit.
I firmly intended to go to the event, hosted by Students Protecting Animal Rights, or SPAR, with an open mind. I’m a lifelong carnivore, but I don’t consider vegetarianism to be an unreasonable lifestyle. I will admit, however, that I half expected the event to be a “preach to the choir” affair, where everyone agreed with everyone else just how cruelly animals were treated by the vile farmers.
That’s why I was very pleasantly surprised and impressed to witness what I did.
During the question-and-answer portion of the event, a guy from MSU’s College of Agriculture asked everyone in his cohort who shared his passion for animals and agriculture to stand, and I was blown away. The agriculture contingent and those who chose to be associated with them easily comprised more than half of the people in attendance. Dozens of students from the College of Agriculture came out in an effort to respectfully share their opposition to PETA and SPAR’s views.
Instead of obnoxiously protesting, they listened carefully to what Mathews said, offering up insightful, thought-provoking questions and valid challenges to his arguments.
Now, don’t think that I walked into this event biased. Despite attending a high school that once prided itself on Drive Your Tractor to School Day, one would be hard-pressed to classify me as anything but a city boy. I once covered a 4H fair for a newspaper, and it was quite the fish-out-of-water affair. When a girl asked me during the presentation if I was on the agriculture “side,” I responded truthfully and unequivocally “no.”
But boy, were they impressive. What won me over even more was that they were the antithesis of PETA in terms of advertising, image and appeal. PETA passed out glossy pamphlets full of good design, shocking imagery and celebrity endorsements (Tobey Maguire is a vegetarian, isn’t that awesome?) in an effort to woo the young and hip, while the agriculture group’s fliers, admittedly, didn’t have that same cool factor.
Well, members of the College of Agriculture, consider me wooed anyway. What the agriculture group lacked in flashiness, they more than made up for in preparation, personal experiences and convictions — as well as facts and figures that served as effective counterpoints to Mathews’ rhetoric. Their desire to respond in force and defend their passion and livelihood from possible misrepresentation was inspiring.
To give credit where it’s due, I will say I also came away with a better understanding and respect for vegetarians and vegans. I think it’s a shame that those who practice that lifestyle often are written off as animal rights fanatics — even though there are a number a different reasons people choose to abstain from meat. The vegetarian position deserves a second look by those who automatically associate all vegetarians with PETA, and I see nothing intrinsically wrong with the lifestyle.
I also found Mathews to be surprisingly calm and levelheaded for a man who was an integral part of the Holocaust on Your Plate campaign, which compares cows led to slaughter to the millions of Jewish lives lost in the Holocaust — something I have major problems with. I believe I came away with a better understanding of the Animal Liberation philosophy, which consequently allowed me to better form my own views — views that, admittedly, are mostly in opposition to PETA and SPAR.
In an effort to raise animals to the level of humans, I feel PETA only ends up demoting humans to the level of animals. To quote the Elephant Man, “I am not an animal, I am a human being!”
It was that human dignity and reason that was on display last Thursday — on both sides — and I’m sure that the animals who come under the care of these students and their peers will be in very capable and caring hands.
I again want to congratulate the students from the College of Agriculture for a job well done in setting an example for all of us.
SPAR, too, deserves recognition for bringing in a speaker and fervidly sharing their views. I learned a lot last week, and I have every reason to believe that everyone at the presentation — whether PETA members or agriculture students — was a person for the ethical treatment of animals.
Dan Faas is the State News opinion writer. Reach him at faasdani@msu.edu.
Commentary
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Jenny
(09/15/09 8:09pm)Report
I was at this event, and I got a very different vibe than you did. The Agriculture students seemed very angry and aggressive in their questioning, whereas the PETA rep seemed more level-headed.
I think most everyone can agree though that the current methods of raising and killing animals for food is both unsustainable and cruel. That was my take-away from the event.
http://www.meat.org
People Eating Tasty Animals
(09/16/09 12:09am)Report
It seemed to me that the Agricultural people showed passion more than anger, and as for aggressive… Some of those guys were pretty big. If you deem that aggressive, then I’m glad they didn’t get pissed off!
love.
(09/16/09 2:21am)Report
I am a vegan and have been a vegetarian for the past 14 years. Since I’ve gotten older and educated myself more I have realized that PETA has good resources and help for people just starting a meat-free diet, but they do give most of us a bad name. The fact of the matter is that animals are not on this earth for our entertainment. Circuses, zoos, birds in cages, pets as a fashion statement (barf in my mouth). Zoos are about power. You show power by keeping an animal captive; how much more powerful are you if you kill it? It is not that we should not eat animals; it’s that we have no right to rape this planet like we have been doing. As more “civilized beings” shouldn’t we realize that by now? Almost no other living being stores (wastes) food the way that we do. The beginning of the end began with the Agricultural Revolution. The war on animals and the earth is very similar to the Holocaust, but for the creatures of this earth there is no end in sight.
Zeke
(09/16/09 9:53am)Report
“The war on animals and the earth is very similar to the Holocaust.”
Congratulations on the most ridiculous statement ever posted on the Snews website. You really equate the brutal slaughter of millions os sentient human beings for nothing more than sport or ethnic cleansing with the killing of minimally concious animals for food and clothing? You’re either incredibly stupid or amazingly heartless. Food animals do not establish multi-generation family bonds. They do not wail in grief when a family member is led to be killed. They do not record history. You can claim that the procedures for killing them are vicious in some limited, off-the-wall cases, but to equate human genocide with dinner is the most inane suggestion ever put to reason.
Joe
(09/16/09 10:47am)Report
Great column… I was at the event and agree with everything you said.
Aaron
(09/16/09 11:20am)Report
As an animal agriculturalist I completely agree with the column. I can speak from personal experience that animals in agriculture are treated humanely and ethically. Of course there are the occasional people that don’t, and those are the ones that you see on meat.org. This is not a random banter I have been to the website, and researched some of the things that they talked about. In every incident I could find that they talked about criminal charges were brought forth.
Additionally I have seen the efforts that animal agriculture puts forth to protect animals. For example I live on a farm that raises pigs in very large numbers. Every about 4.5 months we have 12 semi loads of pigs leave our farm, and three days later we completely refill with small pigs to be raised to market weight again. I have seen about 600 semis of pigs either leave or enter the farm I live on and we pay very close attention to each of the truck drivers. For example we had a driver one time that came in that was absolutely terribly cruel to the pigs, and we reported him. The short story, he no longer works around animals in any sense. 600 hundreds trucks, we have had a problem with one, I would say those are pretty good numbers, and animal ag ostracized the one we had problems with.
Andrew
(09/16/09 1:05pm)Report
I was at the event to show my opposition to peta and i am currently a part of agriculture in the dairy industry. I have attended a few of these events and i have found that the speaker from peta usually doesnt answer the questions just opposes them with his own questions and everyone knows that you cant answer a question with a question even a toddler knows this. peta needs to grow up and realize that without agriculture nobody would be able to buy anything in the supermarkets.
Leslie
(09/16/09 1:16pm)Report
tedman
(09/16/09 3:08pm)Report
The problem with PETA and it’s supporters is that they don’t know anything about raising livestock. The Agr people do. Why would it be in their best interest to abuse their cash crop?
Alex
(09/16/09 3:10pm)Report
Great, unbiased article! Thank you for showcasing both sides.
Food for thought (no pun intended): maybe the agricultural community gets a little passionate — not aggressive — about these issues because their industry, reputations and lives are at stake? What does PETA have to lose with these shocking pieces of literature using scare tactics to convert meat eaters?
Veg
(09/16/09 3:36pm)Report
Alex, I think you are 100% right. The ‘agricultural community” has money and reputation at stake. And as we know, money makes the world go round. Activists including PETA (look up their salary stats before you comment please) are not in it for the money. What is at stake is not some personal but something more important- life. If we don’t speak up, animals will die.
The comment about the Holocaust is exactly right. Animals do communicate, they do cry out when a relative or friend is killed (look at elephants).
The entire comparison between Nazism and Specism was created by Holocaust survivors and is discussed and supported by much of the Jewish community (including myself).
“In his thoughts, Herman spoke a eulogy for the mouse who had shared a pirtion of her life with him and who, because of him, had left this earth. What do they know – all these scholars, all these philophers, all the leaders of the world- about such as you? They have convinced themselves that man, the worst transgressor of all the species, is the crown of creation. All other creatures were created merely to provide him with food, pelts, to be tormented, exterminated. In relation to them, all people are Nazis; for the animals it is an eternal Treblinka.” – Isaac Bashevis Singer, “The Letter Writer”
Jason
(09/16/09 9:34pm)Report
I think this is a great, unbiased article. Kudos to Dan Faas for being open-minded (seriously, I’ve heard numerous conversations about it today).
I still wish I could get a reasonable answer as to why PETA believes it is “ethical” to give children graphic coloring books, KFC “Buckets of Blood”, “Unhappy Meals”, and items that say things such as “Your mommy/daddy kills animals”.
Whether or not you agree with eating animals, I think we should all be able to agree that this is wrong.
Lover of National Parks ;-)
(09/16/09 11:31pm)Report
I guess this proves that we (ag supporters) do not have to steep down to PETA’s level to get our message out.
Tonya Skuse
(09/17/09 12:46am)Report
fantastic article Dan. Proud 2003 animal science grad here.
Guru of the Isle
(09/17/09 1:39pm)Report
PETA members are FREAKS hence nobody takes them serious. IN fact, PETA arguably single handedly ruined animal activism because now nobody takes any animal rights activism seriously since the equate it with PETA freaks. Nice job.
Rob
(09/18/09 9:53am)Report
Great article. I wish people in ag could be considered to have a valid pointby peta. They always want you to hear there opinion. Yet when people have a different veiw we are aggressive towards them. If they could see the other side everybody could get along better. Being a vegetarian is a choice that people make it“s not right or wrong.
Ham
(09/18/09 10:42am)Report
This is the best PETA-covering article I have ever seen in the SN. Gone are the days that Drew Winter would spout his irrational and biased views of the Agriculture industry. Well done Dan, well done!
Tammy
(09/20/09 8:17pm)Report
Thank-you to Dan for the great coverage. I have been in Animal Ag for 25 years as a job and livelyhood. The last 5 yrs have been very hard from the PETA, HSUS,DEQ, DNR, etc people. Farmers feed the world wether they are large or small it is not in our or anyones best interest to over use/exploit any part of our world. Farm on.