To the editor:
Re: "Belugas languish at Â鶹´«Ã½Ó³»aquarium," Feb. 22.
Since it's human nature to avoid painful truths, getting and keeping the public's attention about animal cruelty issues sometimes requires, as columnist Mark Hasiuk says, a bulldozer.
We know that animals of all species live in rich, complex and often difficult worlds that closely parallel our own, yet we continue to cage and chain them in zoos and circuses to amuse us, intentionally cut and burn them in painful and invasive experiments, and subject billions of them to intensive confinement and terrifying deaths on factory farms. We clothe ourselves in animals' skins and drink milk meant for calves. We turn a blind eye to animals' suffering so we can use them for our own purposes.
Like us, animals inherently want to live their own lives in freedom and without interference, to avoid pain and to embrace comfort. To spend time-or not-with family and friends and seek out pursuits and pleasures.
If we accept, as we must, that animals feel pain and joy, love and grief, and fear and longing, we must protect them and reject hunting them for "sport," slaughtering them by the billions for their flesh, skinning them alive for their fur, and beating them with metal batons and whips for our amusement.
Jennifer O'Connor, PETA (U.S.A.)
