Sarah Palin's Fowl Bit of Levity
The new video of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin making the rounds over the last few days is disturbing, but it might just give people throughout America food for thought. After "pardoning" a turkey at the Triple D Farm & Hatchery outside Wasilla, Palin gleefully holds a news conference while live turkeys in the background are fed into an inverted cone for beheading and bleeding, shuddering while their necks are snapped. As AOL News blogger Tommy Christopher said, it's the kind of video that might make someone switch to meat alternatives like Tofurky.
It's no secret that animals are killed for food. What we are troubled by is Palin's jovial tone as these creatures are being slaughtered -- what she calls "a little bit of levity." Whether you think it's appropriate or not to slaughter animals for food, never should it be treated as a joke, nor anything less than a serious moral matter.
Marc Lester of the Anchorage Daily News has video of the pre-slaughter "pardoning," which hasn't been as widely distributed. When reading her Thanksgiving pardon proclamation, Palin says she is a "friend to all creatures great and small" -- but elbows the farmer next to her in the ribs as if to emphasize the big joke. As Time magazine's Ana Marie Cox said on MSNBC's "Countdown" with Keith Olbermann, "She does have this very special relationship with animals... it involves blood usually."
That is indeed Palin's very utilitarian relationship with all creatures great and small -- whether it's authorizing the shooting of wolves from helicopters, denying protections for threatened polar bears and endangered beluga whales, or treating the slaughter of turkeys as if it's a trivial moral question. Of all the 50 state governors across the country, Palin arguably has the most retrograde policies on animal welfare and conservation -- and the Humane Society Legislative Fund is thankful this holiday season that she was not elected to the vice presidency.
If there's any silver lining to the latest Palin interaction with animals, it just might cause people to think about the plight of turkeys. In today's factory farms, turkeys are overcrowded in automated, barren poultry houses, without the ability to engage in natural behaviors. They are bred to grow at an unnaturally rapid pace to unprecedented weights, causing skeletal, muscular, and leg disorders. The U.S. Department of Agriculture currently applies the Humane Methods of Slaughter Act only to mammals, and refuses to extend these basic federal protections to the nearly ten billion turkeys, chickens, and other poultry raised for food each year.
The gory scenes in Palin's video are actually much less severe than we'd see at a major turkey factory farm. This Thanksgiving week, The Humane Society of the United States is reminding people about the Three R's of holiday eating: Refine the methods of industrial farm animal production to minimize pain and distress to animals; reduce the amount of meat, egg, and dairy products for a more sustainable diet; and replace animal products with vegetarian options when possible. Only through a combination of public policy reform, corporate innovation, and consumer demand will we reduce the suffering of farm animals.
Follow Michael Markarian on Twitter: www.twitter.com/mmarkarian
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If we had to kill and prepare our own food as in cows, turkeys, chickens, pigs, etc. I bet most of us would be a vegetarian. I am sick of seeing this video over and over, and I do mean sick. Animals know fear and pain. If we are going to eat them then we should raise them and slaughter them humanely. I think we don't want to recognize other animals as being more like us than we would like to think so we can justify the way we treat them.
I never thought I would ever defend Sarah Palin but here it is. If Wasilla, Alaska is anything like the rural community I live in, it's not uncommon to see people driving around with dead deer in the back of their trucks or even talking to a neighbor while butchering. That's just the way it is, folks. A fact of life in the country. And Palin was addressing people who live in Alaska, not the urbanites and suburbanites who live in the "lower forty-eight".
There are many things we can criticize Palin for, including her support for shooting wolves from a plane, but I don't think this is one of those things.
Levity and irony.
In context with this essay of yours I have to ask how and why could HSUS still support the man who with his fancy one liners nearly assisted MS Sarahcuda right into the white house? When the Bush speech writer Matthew Scully penned the bumper sticker slogans Palin read at the republican convention (his words were the catalyst that helped make her the shallow yet wrathful celebrity she is today) HSUS should have condemned Mr Scully publicly! The fact that HSUS did not condemn him but even actually still supports him explains quite clearly where it stands on protecting animals. The same place Scully does. On a big pile of cash.
Matthew Scully while he did write a poetic defense for animals still supports the Bush admins despicable war in Iraq and was writing speeches for the grotesque Dick Cheney as little as 8 months ago. What do you think the reasons were the pro animal/ anti hunting Mr Scully decided to toss his own beliefs out of the wolf hunting helicopter window for the sadistic MS Palin?
While I thought it was a decent move for HSUS to support Obama over McPalin I really think its time HSUS cared much more about standing up for animals rather than worrying so much about staying A political. Enough is enough. Animal rights is a political issue and its history of advocacy is rooted in liberal politics and liberal social activism. Conservatives by the way never.. make good liberals.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iBM0NULDYl8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iBM0NULDYl8
For all of you who have been posting that it is OK to eat turkeys and other animals, please take a moment to look inside a major turkey farm by clicking on this link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iBM0NULDYl8
This was filmed only a few days ago at one of the largest turkey producers in the US. Please click on the link and then search your hearts. Its not about what we "can" do or have the "right" to do, but it is about what is we know is correct in the deepest part of ourselves. It is a test of our character to do the right thing when we dont have to. Please, take a moment to watch. Happy Thanksgiving to all sentient beings.
Michael,
You must realize how duplicitous HSUS is here. The small turkey farm where Sarah Smile is speaking in front of as if she were no smarter than a 5th grader is the exact same kind of facility that HSUS shills for. In the HSUS conference Taking Action For Animals turkey ranchers are brought in to discuss how they do with humane methods exactly what Sarah's friends are doing here in this video. Killing them slowly, softly with kindness.
YOU HAVE A TURKEY RANCH SPONSER ON YOUR WEBSITE! Do you realize what this says about HSUS and supposedly working for animals rights?
I don't have a problem with an organization growing large and powerful (like Obama did) but in doing so you and HSUS have lost touch with what's really important. In turn your organization has done virtually nothing for animals except an incredible amount of damage to their plight and to what people all now perceive as being animal rights.
I saw the video, and I'm STILL eating turkey Thursday.
Incidentally, I've known a lot of Slaughterhouse workers over the years, and NONE of them are vegetarians.
"Incidentally, I've known a lot of Slaughterhouse workers over the years, and NONE of them are vegetarians."
That says a lot more about human beings then anything else. And I would agree with you in WHATEVER statement you are attempting to make here.
Human beings for the most part while very creative are also the most cruel and most rapacious of all species. No other animal kills its own species or another species in the numbers and brutal ways that humans do.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIjanhKqVC4
"brutal ways that humans do"
HUH? Humans kill cows as quickly and painlessly as possible. Lions will hold a cow by it's throat, while the rest of the pride starts pulling out her entrails.
There is nothing more brutal than Nature. Humans, on the other hand, will go out of their way to try and limit unnecessary pain and suffering. We even use pain killers on Child Rapists, when they are put to death.
"If slaughterhouses had glass walls, we'd all be vegetarians"
Sir Paul McCartney
Fine to eat what you kill! But slaughter of any animal should not be glorified! That's the first thing my father taught me when I learned to handle a gun for food, and food only! End of Story1
Sorry propitiousmoment, but it is a lame argument to say that because animals eat other animals, it is justified for humans to. Humans do not possess any instincts to pounce and sink our teeth into cows, pigs, or chickens and snap their necks, and eat them raw. Nor do any other animals, raise other animals by the billions a year, pump them full of hormones, and systematically kill them to stock daily the endless restaurants & grocery stores across the world. There is nothing natural about either of those scenerios.
"Humans do not possess any instincts to pounce and sink our teeth into cows"
Neither do vultures. But they will still feed on a carcass.
Just because someone is not a hunter, doesn't mean he's not a meat eater.
you almost have a point if you're suggesting that humans should scavenge. people are not naturally carnivores. we don't need to eat animals. sure, i understand hunting & eating meat when you have no other choice, but factory farming is absurd, cruel, and disgusting.
i perhaps have a shred more respect for people who can actually kill, clean, & eat the animal, but the reality is, most people do not connect the meat products that they buy on daily basis with a life. and i'm sure most of them could not kill their own dinner.
We possess the knowledge to create tools to kill, we possess the knowledge to raise other animals which are less aggressive for food, we also possess the knowledge to grow crops, spray them with pesticides, cover the over worked ground with fertilizers and divert water to help them grow. In doing so we poison our environment. We mistreat other human beings to harvest those crops yet you guys want to focus on how mistreated animals are. They are food no more different from the heads of cabbages ready for harvest.
What I thought was appalling about Plain was her cheap attempt for attention and this is all that the turkey incident was about. She knew exactly what was going on she turned to see it at one point and she also addressed it when she said people might not agree with what she was doing.
You don't like the slaughter then go to the auction houses and buy up the meat and keep them on a farm of your own where they can grow old and die.
I see people allowing their children to starve on TV with perfectly health cattle standing around, I see people cutting the fins off of sharks and dumping perfectly good meat over board and then hear their counties complaining about not having enough to eat and you know what I say to that STARVE, you deserve it, you made your beds now wallow in them.
Although I agree with you in principle the fact remains that an organization such as HSUS is advocating this 3 R nonsense instead of just advocating 1 simple V for veganism explains much of why HSUS has become completely in effective in doing the one thing you should be doing. Educating the public about not eating animals if they care about them and !!!! Protecting the rights of other species. Stop making excuses for humans eating animals.YOU CANNOT CARE ABOUT ANIMALS AND EAT THEM!
Your 3 Rs of holiday eating should be for 4 Rs You left out Ridiculous!
Yes, we definitely ought to be humane about how we handle the animals that will become our food. However, there is nothing morally wrong with eating meat. Animals in nature kill and eat other animals all the time; humans are animals that are evolved to be omnivores. Within that broad general frame, everyone's metabolism is different. Some people will thrive with a heavier balance of vegetarian food, others with a heavier balance of animal protein. Personally, when I cut out white flour and sugar, to go on a low-carb diet, my health improved vastly in every way. I have tried vegetarianism in the past and did not thrive. Others cannot process the same proportions of meat in their diet that I do, and vice versa. If you're squeamish about eating meat, don't eat it. And again, I do not condone the inhumane ways that animals are treated on their way to becoming our dinner. But don't expect or try to force everyone else to share your views.
Saying there is nothing wrong morally with eating meat is a bit like saying there is nothing morally wrong with exploiting children, stealing or killing an animal because it's fun.
The fact is they are all morally wrong because they are all unnecessary acts and because those being harmed by the act did not want to be harmed. That's it! Morality doesn't even really exist in the real sense but we make it up and it is something that eventually becomes truth. Real morality comes about from feelings like empathy and compassion. Or it is born from the concept of do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
However the fact that a human does not have to eat animals to survive proves that eating animals is never morally justifiable at all and like killing an animal for fun eating them is only done for the mere pleasure it may bring some person who likes the taste of their flesh and nothing more.
To each their own.
Vegetarians kill to eat.
No mater what someone eats another living thing must die.
You base your ideas of morality off of your own beliefs that you are moral because you do not kill a living thing, yet you do plants are living things just like animals.
Because you have chosen to not eat meat doesn't mean you do not kill to survive.
You do.
Eating animals is not a moral issue, to anyone but those like you.
Animals are food from dogs and cats to pigs, chickens and cows.
Is it wrong to eat bugs? They are living things too and many cultures eat them as well.
I see people allowing their children to starve to death while the is a perfectly good cow to eat standing there is that morally right as well?
Palin is a joke and what she did was only to draw attention and start controversy.
I've helped my father slaughter hogs and beef for our meet and it is not a pleasant sight but I do not feel I will be punished in my after life for it nor do I feel (like many others) it was morally wrong.
You equate the killing of animals to the killing of human beings, while I equate it to killing plants or bugs and no more morally wrong than that.
Do unto me as I am doing unto you, live your life and I'll live mine.
And dogs eat cat s.hit. Are you going to do that now too?
How about sla.very? Do you think people should be forced to act a certain way about that? If some of us feel that some humans (weaker, different color, etc.) should be sl.aves, and we thrive with them in our lives, is that o.k. too?
http://www.animal-rights-library.com/texts-m/singer02.htm
One should always be wary of talking of "the last remaining form of discrimination." If we have learnt anything from the liberation movements, we should have learnt how difficult it is to be aware of latent prejudice in our attitudes to particular groups until this prejudice is forcefully pointed out.
A liberation movement demands an expansion of our moral horizons and an extension or reinterpretation of the basic moral principle of equality. Practices that were previously regarded as natural and inevitable come to be seen as the result of an unjustifiable prejudice. Who can say with confidence that all his or her attitudes and practices are beyond criticism? If we wish to avoid being numbered amongst the oppressors, we must be prepared to re-think even our most fundamental attitudes. We need to consider them from the point of view of those most disadvantaged by our attitudes, and the practices that follow from these attitudes.
The same people who use the "just because it happens among animals doesn't mean it's okay for humans to eat meat" are the people who correctly point out that homosexual behavior is natural and acceptable, with animal behavior as evidence. I hope you can see an inconsistency in that logic. I'm not standing up for slavery, or eating excrement.
I'm not remotely interested in "judging" the morality of your decision to eat meat. I do however hope along with your personal decision and justification that you concern yourself enough to purchase meat and produce from pastured animals, preferably locally raised, who have not lived the sick, painful and terrified lives most "food" animals do.
If you do, I applaud you.
If not...then I wouldn't be too confident as to the real state of your health.
We are, in fact, what we eat, and in a sad way, the animals may yet have their revenge, even tho' they will never "benefit" from it.
Well, I still love Palin, and no turkey can change that :)
Funny....to me she's like someone who really wants to be a doctor but doesn't have either the patience or acumen to do the actual studying. She just wants that white coat & stethoscope....
You LOVE her??? lol
guy or gal? straight or gay? Sure she'd be priviledged to have your love! good luck on that one!
It isn't an issue, in my mind of vegetarian or not as being more or less moral ... it is the manner in which we treat that which we use, especially the helpless.
As for Palin, I think she is so totally self-absorbed that nothing that does not directly affect her is of any consequence to her, and I doubt very much that her lack of concern is limited to animals, in terms of her willingness to wink-wink her way to wherever it is she thinks "God has opened the door" (her words).
Vegetarianism is not healthy for everybody. I followed a vegetarian diet for a couple of years and got sick with gallstones once in the middle of the night.. No one in my family ever had gall bladder problems. I painfully passed the stones that night in the ER. I have followed a low carb diet since and have been doing this for more than five years without any complications. Type two diabetic under control with this diet.
Meat does not kill you, nor does fat=== it is the sugar in most of our prepackaged foods that does it. Take a look sometime at the cereal aisle in the supermarket=== over three hundred different types of cereals, all loaded with the addition of sugar. Wow, like the kids really need to get addicted to sugar at a young age if you feed them these hightly advertised so called cereals. Sugar lobby knows how to get them addicted really youngs I would say.
Sure, meat doesn't kill you, it just kills an innocent animal who wanted to live as much as you do, because you didn't take the time to plan your diet properly.
Sugar does not cause heart disease the way meat does. Heart disease (cardiovascular disease) is now the leading cause of death in the US. Btw..no one ever died from being on a vegan diet. If that were the case then why do almost all health professionals put anyone with a chronic disease on virtually a vegan diet?
Read Dr Dean Ornish work and read The China Study or google it.
But the only real reason not to eat animals is because of the reason below only.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIjanhKqVC4
Too many people view other, non-human, sentient beings as being only worth anything if they're being exploited or murdered. Palin is a prime representative of this bloody-minded attitude: Wild animals are only any good if they're dead.
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