First, let me start out by saying that dog fighting is cruel and reprehensible and it should be illegal. That said, the selective moral outrage of everyone from John Kerry, to ex klansman Robert Byrd, to people who post on this very site, is absolutley repugnant.
I've never seen a dog fight in person but from the clips I've seen on television, it seems pretty brutal. But ya know what else is also brutal and morally outrageous? The sysetmatic raising, quartering, and slaughter of livestock (especially pigs) for the purpose human consumption.
Here are some facts about pigs (and their slaughter) from Peta's own website. (think about this next time you fry some bacon)
Pigs "have the cognitive ability to be quite sophisticated. Even more so than dogs and certainly [more so than] three-year-olds," says Dr. Donald Broom, a Cambridge University professor and a former scientific advisor to the Council of Europe.(1) Pigs can play video games, and when given the choice, they have indicated temperature preferences.(2)
Mother pigs (sows)—who account for more than 6 million of the pigs in the U.S.—spend most of their lives in individual "gestation" crates.(9) These crates are about 7 feet long and 2 feet wide—too small for them even to turn around.(10) After giving birth to piglets, sows are moved to "farrowing" crates, which are wide enough for them to lie down and nurse their babies but not big enough for them to turn around or build nests for their young.(11)
Piglets are separated from their mothers when they are as young as 10 days old. Once her piglets are gone, each sow is impregnated again, and the cycle continues for three or four years before she is slaughtered.(12,13) This intensive confinement produces stress- and boredom-related behaviors, such as chewing on cage bars and obsessively pressing against water bottles.(14,15)
Because they, too, are extremely crowded and prone to stress-related behaviors (such as cannibalism and tail-biting), farmers chop off piglets’ tails and use pliers to break off the ends of their teeth—without any pinkillers.(17) For identification purposes, farmers also cut out chunks of the young animals’ ears.
According to industry reports, more than 1 million pigs die en route to slaughter each year.(21) There are no laws to regulate the duration of transport, frequency of rest, or provisions of food and water for the animals.(22,23) Pigs tend to resist getting into the trailers, which can be made from converted school buses or multidecked trucks with steep ramps, so workers use electric prods to move them along. There are no federal laws to regulate the voltage or use of electric prods on pigs, and a study showed that when electric prods were used, pigs "vocalized, lost their balance and tr[ied] to jump out of the loading area" and that their "[h]eart rate and body temperature was significantly higher ... when compared to pigs loaded using a hurdle [movable chute]."(24) A former pig transporter told PETA that pigs are "packed in so tight, their guts actually pop out their butts—a little softball of guts actually comes out."
The sheer number of animals killed makes it impossible for pigs’ deaths to be humane and painless. Because of improper stunning, many hogs are alive when they reach the scalding-hot water baths, which are intended to soften their skin and remove their hair.(28) The U.S. Department of Agriculture documented 14 humane-slaughter violations at one processing plant, where inspectors found hogs who "were walking and squealing after being stunned [with a stun gun] as many as four times."(29) An industry report explains that "continuous pig squealing is a sign of ... rough handling and excessive use of electric prods." The report found that the pigs at one federally inspected slaughter plant squealed 100 percent of the time "because electric prods were used to force pigs to jump on top of each other."(30) A PETA investigation found that workers at an Oklahoma farm were killing pigs by slamming the animals’ heads against the floor and beating them with a hammer.
I can think of many words to use that would describe the awful inhumane treatment of these smart (smarter than dogs), sensetive, social animals, but the one I think is most fitting is...BARBARIC!!
When is John Kerry going to call for the resignation of the CEO of Jimmy Dean?
Does Robert Byrd think there is a special place in hell for people who treat pigs so cruelly?
Do the people who think Mike Vick should "hang" also think that the people who participate and profit from the institutionalized, inhumane, despicable, slaughter of hogs should also hang?