Monday, August 20

KILLING FARM ANIMALS IS CRUELTY

Not just cruelty, but "A beastly kind of cruelty," according to the headline on this story. You see, because the punks who did the killing didn't eat the animal afterward, that somehow made its death 'cruel,' unlike, you know, the death all farm animals are headed for. Not sure how an animal that's being shot has its experience altered by what's going to happen in the future, but then, I'm not a farmer.

    The buzzards led Nick Bursio to his prized calf. He found the body just over a rise in the field, with a bullet hole in its left shoulder, near the heart. Bursio had heard of animals killed by rustlers for their meat. But not until that May morning had he ever imagined anything so senseless as shooting cattle presumably just to watch them die. "I had a hollow feeling in my gut, to see that dead calf laying there, with the mother cow bellowing nearby," said the Sonoma County rancher. "I thought, what the hell's going on in this place?"
Exactly. I mean, if that calf had been taken away to be turned into veal, that mother cow would've been chuckling gleefully, right?

So that's one cognitive-dissonance oddity. But here's another: "In California, state law provides some protection for large farm animals, but enforcement varies among counties. As a result, prosecutors in farm cases often settle for convictions on lesser vandalism charges." So to sum up, if you destroy the farmer's animal (the putative basis of his very business), that's "vandalism." But if you take any photos of his operation from anywhere near his property, that's, yes, "terrorism." Okey-doke.

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