(Government regulations - they get
more oppressive every day. The animal rights people have plans for
you. This includes your pets, your horses, your right to go
hunting, and your food.
It all sounds too
preposterous to be believed; this is their plan. They
understand how lazy the average person is these days and they will
exploit that laziness by quietly increasing the regulations to the point
that they have won the war.
Then, of course, we will
finally have the new civil war for real, but it will be hard for the
sane citizens to organize to stop it because the schools have been very
busy indoctrinating young minds to believe that PETA & the crazies
are actually the ones who are sane. At that point the
use of distortion of language will be complete, as we were warned about
in the book, "1984". There will only be 'good' and 'ungood', and
the sane people who oppose them will be the enemy of Big
Brother.
The politically-correct crowd
already has most of the gullible young people in their back
pocket. Just notice that the FFA and 4-H leaders are on the
cheerleading squad for NAIS. Nobody stood up for the kids who were
not allowed to show their livestock at the Colorado State Fair because
their parents hadn't signed up for NAIS. It does not look
like America to me.)
Lewis A.
As if there isn’t enough to worry
about, the federal Environmental Protection Agency is telling us that
cow farts are hurting the atmosphere and contributing to global
warming.
You can stop laughing now.
It’s true. EPA
actually is proposing to regulate farmers and ranchers to protect us
from emissions from flatulent hogs and cows.
The deadline for
comments on the proposed anti-fart regulations passed quietly a week
ago.
If the regulations are approved, farmers and ranchers with
at least 25 head of livestock will be taxed at $175 per dairy cow,
$87.50 per beef cow and $20 per hog.
Preposterous, you might say,
and you’re right.
But we would call it something else. We would
call it calculated and deliberate.
It
stems directly from the animal rights agenda, which is aimed at
eliminating animals from American life, including animals that produce
meat, milk, eggs and wool. The goal is to reinvent America as a vegan
vegetarian society.
We imagine that you are still
laughing.
Preposterous! America loves a good t-bone, Big Macs,
milkshakes and eggs fried in sausage drippings. Yum.
You are
correct in thinking that Americans will not allow meat, eggs and dairy
products to be removed from our lives. Surveys show that more than
95-percent of us eat meat and love every bite we can get.
What
you may not be thinking is that no one is planning to give us that
choice.
The following analysis can be seen as a case study on how
the animal rights agenda actually is being implemented in America today.
While this example is about the planned elimination of meat, eggs and
dairy products from our lives, slight variations in the same strategy
also are being used to eliminate companion animals, circuses, rodeos and
hunting.
The animal rights groups may be evil personified, but
their leaders aren’t dumb. They know that Americans will not give up
animal products voluntarily, and they aren’t going to try the direct
approach. They’d lose, and they know it.
Their tactic is to
indirectly and gradually take away our ability to choose to eat
meat.
The logical tactic is to make animal products too expensive
for people to use and enjoy regularly, and also to make farming
unprofitable and more hassle than it’s worth.
Did you notice how the
price of beef skyrocketed after the “mad cow disease” scare a couple of
years ago? In about a month, most cuts of beef went up by about two
dollars a pound.
The reason is that meat producers were assessed
for the cost of a massive federal inspection and regulatory program, and
for developing a way to track each animal from the slaughterhouse back
in time to the place of its birth.
Suddenly, a half-decent steak
costs $10 a pound. If you’re lucky, you can find it on sale for $6.99 or
so.
How many people can afford that?
For most people, a
juicy t-bone steak probably always has been only an occasional treat,
perhaps once or twice a month. Now, it has become once or twice a
year.
Have you noticed how small the meat section has become in
most grocery stores? Have you noticed how small the portions have
become?
I define a good steak as one pound or larger and marbled
with fat. Most steaks in the grocery store are a little more than half
that size today, and the meat looks like the cow was
anorexic.
Part of the reason is the high price of beef. Another
part of it is the health scare about cholesterol.
While
cholesterol is a valid health concern for many people, the animal rights
groups are exploiting this and other health issues to try to make people
afraid to eat much meat.
I recall a billboard along I-35 in
Dallas that was a photo of former President Ronald Reagan, linking his
meat eating preferences with Alzheimer’s disease. Guess who sponsored
this crude and tasteless billboard? It wasn’t the American Medical
Association. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) paid for
the billboard.
If Alzheimer’s doesn’t get you, “mad cow” disease
or cholesterol will. That’s the message.
Meat already is being
heavily taxed because of the brief “mad cow” disease scare. Now, EPA
wants to tax it more because of cow fart emissions.
What’s next?
A tax on meat because of its health risks similar to the extra taxes on
cigarettes?
Yep. Give ‘em time. It won’t be long before some
governmental agency proposes a big tax on every pound of meat to pay for
“prevention” programs in the schools and social services agencies,
mirrored after the tobacco use prevention campaigns. You’ll know the
time has come when you start to see news reports about meat eaters
driving up the cost of health insurance.
Enter the $20 a pound
t-bone steak.
Exit meat from many people’s budgets.
That’s
the plan, but it doesn’t stop here. The next big step is the National
Animal Identification System (NAIS), which currently is “voluntary” but
is expected to become mandatory soon.
The NAIS plan is to license
every location that produces poultry and livestock, and to assign each
farm or ranch owner a unique identification number (that also applies to
someone who owns a horse, or a couple of 4H goats). Then, at some point,
every domestic animal and bird on American farms will be microchipped to
determine its place of birth, and it will be tracked on computer all the
way from the farm to the grocery store.
Guess how much that is
going to cost? Guess who will pay for it?
Microchips can be
purchased in bulk today for about $1.50 apiece. Suddenly the $3 frying
chicken sold at the grocery store for $1.39 a pound has become a $4.50
chicken.
Add in the cost of bureaucracy and additional expenses
for farmers, shippers and slaughterhouses, and it becomes a $6.50
chicken.
A lot of Americans won’t be able to afford to eat much
chicken at those prices. It looks like a good time to invest your money
in bean burrito company stock.
And that is precisely the
plan!
The bureaucratic and compliance costs of NAIA will be
enormous. Imagine what it will take to constantly track a truckload of
10,000 chickens individually on computers!
What’s the
justification for these costs? “Bird flu,” of course, even though no
form of this poultry disease that is communicable to humans has ever
been found in the Americas.
The animal rights groups know exactly
what they are doing. They find something scary about meat (Alzheimer’s
disease, cholesterol, “Mad Cow” disease or “bird flu”) and then work
quietly behind the scenes to exploit it. They have a lot of flunky
newspaper and TV reporters in their pockets, and a lot of bureaucrats
are smelling a lot of job security.
And a frying chicken will
cost $6.50…for a small one.
The other side to NAIS is the burden
to farmers and the rest of the food industry. Can you imagine the cost
to a farmer of microchipping 100,000 chickens a month! How many
employees will the farmer have to hire? How many fines will farmers face
for microchips that come out? How many people will the trucking
companies and slaughterhouses have to employ to scan a few million
chickens a day for microchips?
Maybe it will be a $7.50 chicken,
if we’re lucky.
“What’s for supper, Honey?”
“Two chicken
McNuggets and beans, Sweetheart.”
That’s the plan.
NAIS
will be applied first to cattle, hogs and poultry, but also to horses. A
person who owns a couple of pleasure horses would have to report to the
federal computer anytime they take a ride off of their property. Lord
help them if they want to travel with their horses!
Many people
believe dogs and cats will be next for NAIS.
Another prong in the
animal rights plan is to regulate or eliminate what they allege are
cruel “factory farming” practices, such as raising hens for egg
production in battery cages. Farmers defend these practices, saying that
all of the known needs of chickens are being met, and also that these
methods keep the cost of food reasonable so that poor and working class
people can afford to have better diets.
But the farmers lost a
big battle last month with the overwhelming voter approval of
Proposition 2 in California. Following this referendum, almost every egg
farm in California will be put out of business.
Only free range
chickens, or chickens kept in traditional henhouses, will be
permissible. Expect the cost of a dozen eggs to jump to $3 or so. Make
it $4 when you factor in NAIS, and $5 when you add the cost of “bird
flu” insurance.
Don’t worry. You’ll enjoy bean
McMuffins.
Look for a law resembling Proposition 2 to become
nationwide within the next few years.
Of course, you can’t have a
law without also having cops to enforce it. Every one of these programs
will open up every farm in America to unannounced inspections, visits by
animal cruelty officers and even vigilante spies from animal rights
groups.
How much money will farmers have to spend on attorney
fees, paying fines for technical violations (the chicken that lost its
microchip), or rebuilding facilities, upgrading computer systems and
hiring new employees?
How many farmers will say “enough is
enough” and throw in the towel?
How many people will be able to
afford to buy milk at $8 a gallon, eggs at $5 a dozen, steaks at $20 a
pounds, hamburger at $10 or sausage at $12?
We saw the same thing
happen in a different form this year, when HSUS exposed cruelty at a
California slaughterhouse. A video showed a downer cow being pushed with
a loader.
The firestorm of protest over that incident brought a
host of new federal regulations and increased inspections of
slaughterhouses, even though the incident was a clear violation of
existing laws and regulations. The problem could have been solved easily
and simply, but it wasn’t.
Instead, your steak went up another
50-cents a pound.
Dollars and cents is the most effective
strategy the animal rights groups have discovered. Who cares if you want
to eat meat if you can’t afford it!
Your choices become a moot
point.
No matter where you look, activists and social reformers
want to use money to limit your choices.
Environmentalists want
gasoline to cost $20 a gallon, so you’ll use less of it.
The
Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) wants a hamburger to cost $15
at McDonalds, so that you’ll eat your veggie burgers and shut
up.
They want gasoline to be expensive, because this will drive
up the price of corn used for animal feed and fuel to transport all of
America’s foodstuffs, and thus the price of meat for consumers. If
gasoline rises to $10 a gallon, you won’t be eating much
meat.
HSUS wants to make you pay a few thousand dollars for
liability insurance to own a gun, so that you won’t be able to afford to
go hunting. Thus, hunting can be eliminated without any politician ever
having to cast a vote to do it.
And they also want the price of a
puppy to be about $5,000, so that only rich people will be able to
afford one and the vast majority of Americans will forget what it is
like to love and be loved by a dog.
Wars have been won without
ever firing a shot.
And the animal rights war will be won in your
pocketbook, if you don’t wise up.
Merry Christmas
Bill Sutton
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