To the editor:
The Supreme Court has upheld a California law supported by animal rights activists which mandates increased space for pigs and egg-laying chickens. It will undoubtedly lead to increased prices in an already inflated food industry as producers work to meet compliance, the cost of which they will pass on to the consumer.
It need hardly be emphasized that the kind treatment of animals is an obligation, and the ill treatment of them reprehensible.
But aside from this particular case, there does seem today an overzealous solicitousness for animals which stands in marked contrast to the obvious lack of it for human beings, especially the most innocent of them – children. The skeptic might be tempted to think that the former excuses, or licenses, the latter, providing the public with a way to endorse or sanction the legal inflicting of harm onto children, while simultaneously maintaining its delusion of itself as compassionate!
We have, and rightly so, free-range chickens and pigs, but fewer and fewer free-range toddlers, because in the pillage that is presently euphemized as the market, it is increasingly impossible to afford the home that has the yard for them to toddle in.
Indeed, it is becoming so that the most responsible thing a young couple can do for their family is not have one! We have dogs riding in child strollers, while children ride in the cars that serve as their home. Other children are “ penned up” in overcrowded apartments, where their situation would be denounced as appalling — if they were animals!
There are tens of thousands of children in the hell of homelessness every day, or worse, every night; but have you ever heard of a homeless chicken? Of course not; that’s preposterous! Everyone knows that a chicken can’t enter into a contract, the violation of which will bring it great suffering. But come to think of it — neither can a child!
Sincerely,
Joseph R. Noone
Lynn
