Deer in the Headlights
By Trent Loos

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) hosted a “Holocaust on your Plate” demonstration last week at the capital in Bismarck, ND. If you are not familiar with this theme, the Nazis viewed the Holocaust victims as "lives unworthy of life." PETA compares this to modern society's abuse of animals in factory-farm facilities where PETA alleges that animals are mistreated. KFYR, my radio affiliate in Bismarck, called and asked me to help. I couldn’t be there for the demonstration, but I was on the air live for two hours the day before. We encouraged concerned citizens to show up with BBQ grills and tell PETA to go home. Fifty people showed up with BBQ grills served 400 hamburgers and a PETA spokesman said, “that has never happened before.”

The premise from the animal rights movement is that humans are now smart enough to eat without killing animals. Their message if filled with tales of animals suffering and how cruel and unusual it is to harvest animals for food. A recent report from Oregon State University looked at the number of animals that are killed as a result of crop production. The report, by S.L. Davis of the OSU Department of Animal Sciences, suggests that if we switched solely to a vegan or vegetarian diet, we would kill three times more animals than we harvest farm animals for food. This report takes into account earthworms, rabbits, pheasants, insects and on down the line. So, once again, the vegan argument for protecting animals doesn’t hold water.

While driving to Bismarck late one night, I am bombarded by thousands of bugs hitting my windshield. That is when it hit me, figuratively as well as literally! Just because people want to go to and fro, we are cruelly and unusually killing animals, birds and insects. These insects have no intention of committing suicide. They are just following their natural instinct to go toward the light.

It is reported that we kill one million animals on our nations highways every day, not including the countless insects. These animals are not harvested for food. No value comes to our ecology as they lay on the side of the road deteriorating and possibly contaminating our nations waterways. Not to mention the odor caused by the whole process. And the only reason for these deaths is because people think it is important to go from here to there. To put these figures into context, we kill twice as many animals on the highway as we harvest cattle and hogs for food.

So where is the outrage? Why are we not trying to enact legislation to get cars off of the highways? If we went back to horses and buggies, we would not have this senseless death toll. Furthermore, since 60% percent of all of these deaths occur at night, the logical place to start is to mandate that vehicles may not travel after dark.

These fund raising groups (PETA for example) are not about providing solutions. They simply attempt to exploit the most vulnerable people in today’s society. They know too many citizens would be affected if they tried to provide a solution to true “animal death”. Instead, it is easier to pick on United States farmers and ranchers because very few know or care about the big picture. Their underlying fund raising tactic is that they show a picture of animals dying. Since nobody wants to die, they will achieve great sympathy, which in turn generates big dollars.

We are bombarded with news stories about the crisis of CWD (Chronic Wasting Disease). It has been reported that less than 5,000 deer have died in the last 34 years from CWD. But we don’t hear much about the 500,000 deer killed annually on nations highways? Instead we commonly hear the phrase “deer in the headlights” used with no compassion for the loss of an animal and the grieving family members they leave behind.

Here is how I see it. This society seems to be about intelligence but we play on people’s emotions if we think it will help our cause. PETA can try to save every farm animal, because it doesn’t require making any changes in their own lifestyle. If they had to give up driving in order to save deer and other wildlife, that would be a sacrifice that would hit a little too close to home. It is essential that we keep in mind the purpose each animal serves on this earth and not let emotions cloud our intelligence.

 

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