Globex Corporation Newsletter

My favorite news item of the day (could also be classified as Pointless Shirt), from The Rapid City Journal. I read the article and my first thought was, "hey, no mention of how it's unethical to eat chickens." I'm not sure how to react to that. After seeing an old episode of Penn & Teller's BULLSHIT about PeTA, I suppose that's a good thing being as PeTA seems to be miguided in their attempts to save all animals from, well, anything. At least this one person in Virginia seems to actually be concerned with the treatment of chickens, up to killing and eating them.

An excerpt:

...the woman's e-mail indicated that there were four chickens locked in small glass boxes being "forced" to do tricks for food without being provided water. The e-mail also said the chickens appeared to be starving and didn't get to eat unless they made a certain number of baskets.

"The chickens were trying frantically and pathetically to successfully complete the games," Davis said, reading from the e-mail.

"Forcing chickens to play basketball is not a humane way to treat them, no matter what kind of rationalization is attempted to be made," Davis said. "Chickens are foraging animals. They belong on the ground, scratching the earth, taking sun baths and dust baths, forming and reforming small flocks and running around."

You know what this email fails to mention is the treatment that human basketball players face, particularly in the Post-Jordan NBA. Ratings are way down and last night I couldn't remember who the last NBA champion was (San Antonio?). At lot of players in the NBA are essentially forced to play basketball as they have no other marketable skill. It's either play ball or live the thug life, you know, like Sebastian Telfair trying to take a loaded gun onto a charter flight.

I see stories in newspapers about basketball every day, seldom do I see any stories decrying the unethical treatment of NBA players. I see few about underpaid workers. I see few about underage workers making soccer balls in India for pennies a day.

I am not in favor of animal cruelty any more than I am in favor of human cruelty. Given the choice, I'm going to attempt to save the life of a human long before I attempt to save the life of any animal, particularly if the animal is tasty.

I am completely in favor of the ethical treatment of animals, but I'm more in favor of the ethical treatment of humans. In my opinion it is ethical for me (or anyone) to eat tasty animals. Some may disagree, then I ask you not to eat animals and let's end the discussion there.

BOJ