From: jhoskins@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (James M Hoskins)
Subject: Re: Hunting and Killing. Re: Letter to John Robinson
Organization: The Ohio State University
Date: Wed, 19 Aug 1992 19:49:36 GMT

In article <1992Aug19.160809.12659@clpd.kodak.com> black@che.serum.kodak.com (R
obert Black (x37236)) writes:
>
>>If ARFs were truly interested in reducing the killing that takes place,
>>they'd focus on hunter education and certification more so than on banning
>>hunting.
>
>What are you talking about?  One obvious way to reduce killing is to
>simply do less of it.
>
>>No.  ARFs are in my estimation people who boost their own
>>self-esteem and gratify their own need to feel important by setting
>>themselves up as the mouthpieces of 'the voiceless ones'.
>

[Vast quantities mercifully edited out]

>>>>this way, the vast majority, of course don't fit this picture.  As well,
>>>>some of what I've read here has led me to believe many of you consider the
>>>>killing of an animal as something that is painful to the animal.  It can
>>>>be, if done inncorrectly.  But from witnessing the two procedures, it would
>>>>be my guess that a majority of sufferring occurs in farm yard and
>>>>commercial slaughtering, much more so in fact than occurs in hunting.  I
>>>>have no numbers to back this assertion up with, but I have seen (and
>>>>heard!) pigs being butchered, I've heard tell of cows being butchered by
>>>>people who witnessed it first hand, and I've seen animals killed live and
>>>>on video by hunters.  All of that information leads me to believe the
>>>>assertion is correct.  Add to this the fact that a high population just
>>>>prior to winter translates to a high winter kill (by slow painful
>>>>starvation) and that other predators (coyotes, wolves, big cats) kill more
>>>>slowly than man, and I think death at a hunter's hands is, short of dying o
f
>>>>old age, is the least painful and traumatic death for the animal in most
>>>>cases.

[Not a word from Mr. Black in response to the above paragraph]

I don't understand yet why our AR friends seem to never address in this forum
the issue of farm animal conditions and commercial slaughter in meat packing
houses etc.  If the reason is that they have only so much time to respond to
the hunters writing in talk.politics.animals then I'll accept that for an
answer.

Anyway, I don't follow this AR movement closely enough to know whether Mr.
Black, Russell L. et al. mirror the relative energy that AR people put into
anti-hunting advocacy versus other things they could be doing.  From this group
I get the impression that Ferris and his friends have parties and conferences
in woodland areas during hunting seasons and then take nature hikes, clanging
on pots and pans to scare animals.  Again, I'm ready to be corrected of a
mistaken impression.

My goodness, agriculture in this country is moving toward ever more containment
of farm animals within smaller and smaller areas.  To maintain health under
these conditions, the farm industry is forced to inject or feed the animals
with a steady diet of drugs throughout their lifetimes...talk about lack of
dignity...Then animals get crammed into trucks and journey on to market, wait
in feedlots, are lined up, supposedly then they are stunned, and their throats
slit...then on down the assembly line.  How many modern factory farms does
Ferris wheel by on his way to the party in the woods?  For me personally,
picketing in front of a meat packing plant is not my style, maybe it isn't
Russell Lawrence's either; I do not want to come across as holier than thou.
I have been vocal on the increased deanimalization of farm animals and
have written letters, doing what I can.  Do any of the AR people who--like
Russell or Mr. Black--seem intensely energized by the issue of animal rights
care about factory farming of animals in the sense that they ever write about
it here?

What must at least in part be exasperating for hunters is to be singled out
for abuse when all who in good faith examine the issue of how animals are
treated in modern American society know where the greater qualitative and
quantitative abuse lies.


**
Newsgroups: talk.politics.animals