New Yorker magazine features PETA

[jenbizagogo]

Please Buy & Thank Current Issue of New Yorker Magazine

Forward widely and ask others to send in a note of thanks.
Letters can be sent letters to: themail@newyorker.com (newyorker.com)

The current issue of The New Yorker features a 14 page article about
PETA and the animal rights movement. The magazine will undoubtedly
receive complaints from those who profit from harming animals and
oppose animal rights, so it is important that the magazine receives
letters of support.

The article was written by a man who spent months studying and
interacting with PETA and PETA's president, Ingrid Newkirk. Among
other things, it includes interviews, detailed description of cruelty
in the circus, fur, and meat industry, and descriptions of
intelligence in pigs and chickens. It lists many web sites that
address animal rights issues giving readers the opportunity to learn
more. At one point the author describes his horrific experience of
entering a chicken factory farm and the ghastly conditions the
chickens were forced to live in.

This article will educate thousands of readers about why the issue of
animal rights is so urgent. The following are excerpts from the
article. The story is not available online, so please call your local
magazine stand or library to see if they have this issue if you would
like to read the entire article.

Please consider responding to this article to show your support for
animal rights. Please thank The New Yorker for focusing on this
important issue and for explaining why so many people reject
businesses that profit at the expense of animals.

Letters can be sent letters to: themail@newyorker.com (newyorker.com)

[jenbizagogo]

Excerpts from "The Extremist: The Woman Behind the Most Successful
Radical Group in America"
By Michael Specter
The New Yorker
...

PETA objects not only to the use of animals in science, and to
anything having to do with fur (furismurder.com, furshame.com), but
also to zoos (wildlifepimps.com), fishing (fishinghurts.com,
lobsterlib.com), and tobacco companies that still test their products
on animals (smokinganimals.com). These days, the PETA leadership
devotes much of its energy to the issue that is sees as responsible
for the most abuse of animals by far: the way American corporations
turn billions of cows, pigs, and chickens into meat each year.
(kentuckyfriedcruelty.com and murderking.com are just two of many
examples; there are also wickedwendys.com and shameway.com.)

Because circuses appeal so widely to the young, they arouse PETA's
particular wrath (circuswatch.com). One night in December, I stood in
front of the Savannah Civic Center when the Ringling Brothers and
Barnum & Bailey Circus came to town. Newkirk and several colleagues
were there, and they spent the evening bearing placards, dodging
police, and hectoring scores of families who were entering the
coliseum with young children. ("Elephants are mammals!" they
shouted. "Mammals have hair. Do you know how trainers remove that
hair so the elephants will look good for you tonight? They burn it
off with blowtorches. Please make this your last visit to the
circus.") The PETA video truck was parked nearby.

With elegiac music playing in the background, a continuous loop of
clandestinely shot footage ran on the truck's two giant screens, each
showing trainers beating, shocking, whipping, and even shooting
elephants. The children who saw the video were horrified and their
parents were furious.
.....

Once, after an hour of frustrating debate on the morality and merit of
using animals in scientific research, I asked [Ingrid Newkirk] whether
she would remain opposed to experiments on, say, five thousands rats,
or even five thousand chimpanzees, if it was required to cure
AIDS. "Would you be opposed to experiments on your daughter if you
knew it would save fifty million people?" she replied.
....

American meat producers have become remarkably specialized and
economically adept. Since the animals are seen as widgets, their
welfare has neve been much of a priority. The guiding imperative is
efficiency and economy, and of course you can raise many more
chickens, pigs, and cows if you cram them into an aluminum shed or a
crate rather than let them wander around the farm. A pig living in a
concrete crate that is two feet wide can't move, and that's the
point. In 1994, according to the United States Department of
Agriculture, seventy-three percent of the pigs raised in America were
on small farms and twenty-seven percent were on large industrial
farms; by 2001, those figures had been reversed.

Litters are bigger and more frequent now, so industrial farms have to
pack the animals in as tightly as possible. Pigs have a four-month
gestation period. Before giving birth, the sows are moved from the
gestation crates to farrowing crates, which have just enough extra
room for the piglets to emerge. When they are taken from the mothers -
- after 3 weeks-the sows are immediately impregnated again (through
artificial insemination) and returned to their gestation crates. On
factory farms, any sow that isn't pregnant or lactating isn't doing
her job.

Calves are usually taken from their mothers the day they are born. The
females are raised to replace dairy cows, and the males, since they
can never produce milk, are raised for meat. Most are killed for
beef, but about a million are used for veal in the United States
every year. (The veal industry was created solely to take advantage
of the large supply of unwanted male calves.) Farmers pack them into
crates so small that sometimes they can neither lie down nor turn
around. The calves are fed a milk substitute that is deficient in
iron and fiber and is designed to make them anemic. It is the anemia
that produces the light-color flesh for which veal is so highly
prized.

[Vegit-8]

Thank you jenbizagogo for the heads up on the New Yorker Mag article. That is just awsome and I will definitely get a copy and send them a letter of praise.
The excerpt is full of stuff that will, once again, disturb my sleep.

May peace and joy be with you, and all living beings.
Vegit-8

[jenbizagogo]

Thanks Vegit-8! I'm such a big advocate of letter writing campaigns I hope they get lots o' letters of praise! I can't wait to pick up a copy of the magazine myself!

Now, go get some sleep, okay?

[Spaceman]

Is the issue that it is in out now?

[jenbizagogo]

Yes Spaceman,

The issue is out now...I just got back from a quick lunchtime magazine run and picked myself up a copy. I've haven't browsed through it yet cuz I'm too busy drooling over the new issue of Mad magazine that features the Lord of The Ring on the cover!

The New Yorker issue is April 14th, 2003.

[herbi]

Originally posted by jenbizagogo
I'm too busy drooling over the new issue of Mad magazine that features the Lord of The Ring on the cover!

Thanks for the tip-- I was already in the library when I read that, so I just moseyed over to the periodicals..... I think it was a pretty good article overall. I'll have to spread the word locally!
(Have fun drooling! Mmm... Lego-licious... )

[Spaceman]

I read the article. I was expecting the worst ... it actually wasn't too bad.

It put a normal just like you and me spin to Ingrid Newkirk ... as much as you can spin that onto her

[misanthropy]

This is old news, but I have a copy of the article scanned (from someone else). If anyone would like to read it, send me your email in a PM and I will email it to you (it's over 1 meg).