PETA yet AGAIN

I see the PETA people are at it again. These are the nuts who want us all to be vegetarians before they turn the planet back to the animals. I read an article the other day that said the other PETA stood for People Eating Tasty Animals. I wish I was brilliant enough to come with that one. It made my day.

Anyway, the fools are arguing in favour of the new basketball used in the NBA. That is that composite material the NBA is trying out instead of using leather balls. I really don't care one way or the other as I don't follow basketball, but it did make news for a little while.

PETA offered to supply these millionaire basketball players with hand cream to soothe whatever injuries they might incur using the new balls. I have to agree with PETA that the ball players are a highly over-paid bunch of self-important sissies and maybe the offer of and cream is a tongue-in-cheek way of pointing that out to them, but PETA has never had a sense of humour so I think they are serious about this.

Apparently, Manager of Campaigns Dan Shannon wrote to the NBA saying that, "Thousands of cows stand to suffer far worse" than any injury a ball player might come across from using the new basketballs. He's right, up to a point.

It seems PETA can't wrap its head around the idea that some cattle are raised for consumption by us unrepentant carnivores. PETA would rather show up at a cattle ranch and name all the cows and steers thereon, thus making them all pets and therefore harder to turn into feed for humans. What nonsense.

Nobody advocates the abuse of any animal, but when it comes down to supply meeting demand, well you really can't get around killing the animal in question in a quick and efficient way. That goes for ducks, geese, chickens, cows, steers, emus, pigs, buffalo, goats, etc. These animals are raised to die and believe it or not, they don't know any better. Don't tell me you speak for the ones raised in cages and have never seen the light of day. If you did speak for them you'd be grunting, mooing, quacking or some other thing I wouldn't be able to understand.

PETA seems to be under the impression that we take the choicest part of the animal and leave the rest to rot. Hardly. We learned well from the Indians to use all of the animal. Except for the foolish destruction of the buffalo in the late 1800's, we have learned to use those parts not fit for consumption for other purposes. A cow may die to feed us but the hooves and cartilage go into making glue. It's hide may go into making us a coat, the seats of our cars or a basketball.

Shannon writes, "Maybe by taking care of your own skin, you can allow cows who would otherwise meet their end in the slaughterhouse to keep theirs." I don't think so. The cows were bred for no other express purpose than to die for us. They are not Fido the family dog or Cuddles the family cat. They are food, plain and simple.

If a truly vegetarian diet is so good for you, why do we keep getting bombarded with ads for vitamin supplements to replace what we are missing by eating nothing but trees and shrubs and turning instead to red or white meat?

PETA is a joke and unfortunately they take themselves way too seriously. Let them stay on the fringe and take anything they say as free entertainment.

I still like the People Eating Tasty Animals bit. I think I'll go to a wild game dinner tonight.