PETA goes overboard on slain cows

The anti-meat group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, or PETA, vows to erect a billboard near Salina as a memorial to six head of cattle killed in the August crash of a cattle truck on K-4 highway.
In New England, a similar billboard is planned to commemorate the crash of a truck carrying 4,500 lobsters, whose deaths the organization decries.
And while we agree with the organization that these deaths are regrettable, especially all those lobsters, we think these plans point out the fact that PETA is not a group concerned about better treatment for animals as such, but today makes no bones about the fact that it wants people to stop wearing, eating or experimenting on animals of all kinds.
The billboard in Kansas wouldn’t be the first memorial to cattle killed in a traffic accident. A similar effort was proposed in Louisiana last year after a crash on Interstate 20 killed 10 head.
The group refers to cattle as “sensitive creatures with complex social lives,” which may well be true. Part of its statement, or motto, is “animals are not ours to eat.”
What happens to these animals once we refuse to eat them isn’t really addressed. Presumably, many would go to rescues or refuges, or become pets, living long and happy lives in complex social groups.
Not the lobsters, though. Many lobsters — and fish, crabs, other sea creatures — going to market today are farmed, or “responsibly farmed,” as the menu writers like to say.
We can infer, then, that the lobster and fish population would drop quite a bit if PETA has its way. And cattle?
We can only guess. Cattle are large, messy animals that don’t make good pets and besides, they’re expensive to feed. They are domestic animals, unsuited to life in the wild. There likely would be few cattle after a couple of years, kept perhaps in zoos, not a fate we’d wish on any sensitive creature.
Then there is the problem of cattle raising being a $67 billion industry in the U.S.
And that’s just what farmers and ranchers are paid; think of the billions involved in the packing and processed meat industries, prepared foods and the like, and all those employed on farms — especially to grow feed grain — packing houses and food processing whose jobs depend on beef.
We suppose PETA would look at them as necessary collateral damage.
But we doubt the economy on the High Plains could withstand the end of animal agriculture. PETA urges farmers to grow crops, not animals, but what crops can you raise on the average acre of pasture?
Think about that when you pass the lovely cow on the coming billboard.
This group has a long ways to go to win over the hearts of the farmer-stockman and the rancher. Kansas, being third in the nation in cattle raising and cattle on feed, would be especially hard hit.
Ah, well. Maybe a burger for lunch?
— The Oberlin Herald