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The following letter from Karen Davis, President of United Poultry
Concerns, appears in the January 2002 edition of The Takoma Voice
(Takoma Park, MD). It opposes the Takoma Park Farmer's Market's
recent addition of animal products-corpses, cow's milk, and eggs--to
the market's food selection. Letters to the Editor email address:
voice@takoma.com. Website: www.takoma.com
1 December 2001
Karen Davis, President
United Poultry Concerns, Inc.
12325 Seaside Road PO Box 150
Machipongo, VA 23405
Ph: (757) 678-7875; fax: 5070
www.UPC-online.org
The Takoma Voice
PO Box 11262
Takoma Park, MD 20913
Regarding the sale of meat and "free-range" eggs at the Takoma Park
Farmer's Market: All those in favor of diversity draw the line at a
diversity that would extend to the destruction of themselves, their
loved ones, and anything else of true value to them, including their
property. It is very easy to be proud of one's tolerance for a wide
variety of human choices so long as those choices cost the tolerant
one little or nothing. Several years ago, my organization, United
Poultry Concerns, conducted a campaign to stop a dismemberment ritual
called the "rooster pull." A rooster pull is a dismemberment
ritual/sport conducted by certain Native American pueblos (villages)
in New Mexico, in which contestants tear live roosters apart before
spectators. One day I received a call from a woman complaining that
our campaign sought to suppress "diversity," and that we Anglos or
white Americans owed Native Americans the right to dismember live
roosters for whatever reason they chose, as payment for the genocide
we had practiced on these people.
Now, if this person had been called upon to sacrifice her own body to
a dismemberment ritual in the name of diversity and/or as an
atonement for what her ancestors did or might have done to the
ancestors of contemporary Native Americans, she would have drawn a
line. But because roosters meant nothing to her and had no legal
protections, she could "sacrifice" them, even though roosters were
not responsible for the atrocities perpetrated against Native
Americans. Standing up for the "right" of people to sacrifice
roosters not only cost her nothing; it gave her a "no skin off my
back" claim to righteous indignation and lofty tolerance for a
victimization that, had her great grandparents been documented as
having massacred an entire Native American village or nation, she
would not have agreed to if it were her life (and I will presume to
say a lot less) at stake.
Neither the values of diversity nor the desire to atone for past
injustices give one a right to be cruel. The people of Takoma Park
are sufficiently well educated and sophisticated to know that meat
and other animal products, however euphemized as "organic,"
"free-range," etc. entail slaughter, mutilations, and choicelessness
for those Who Did Not Willingly Give Up Their Lives or Their Joy
(such as raising their own families instead of having their families
torn apart by "farmers"). Roscoe, the Takoma Park rooster
memorialized under the town clock in a beautiful statue, should mean
more than just private and communal feelgoodism and compartmentalized
care, requiring nothing more of people who claim to hate violence and
"terrorist attacks." Every piece of "poultry" was a Roscoe. Every
dead body for sale at the market got that way as the result of
multiple terrorist attacks. Every commercial hen and
cow--"free-range," whatever-gets sent to a slaughterhouse after
having been forced to give up the products of her body designed to
sustain her own young. As a writer (Paul Shapiro) said in his letter
in the November issue of the Takoma Voice, becoming vegetarian
(vegan) is a powerful way to take a stand against the violence and
bloodshed that plague our society-our entire world-today. It is a way
of saying, and meaning, "Let there be peace, and let it begin with
me."
Sincerely,
Karen Davis, PhD
President
Member of the Roscoe Memorial Committee
Author of Prisoned Chickens, Poisoned Eggs: An Inside Look at the
Modern Poultry Industry; Instead of Chicken, Instead of Turkey: A
Poultryless "Poultry" Potpourri (a vegan cookbook); A Home for Henny
(a children's book); and More Than a Meal: The Turkey in History,
Myth, Ritual, and Reality (Lantern Books, 2001).
United Poultry Concerns is a nonprofit organization promoting the
compassionate and respectful treatment of domestic fowl. For more
information, visit www.UPC-online.org..
United Poultry Concerns, Inc.
PO Box 150
Machipongo, VA 23405-0150
757-678-7875
FAX: 757-678-5070
www.upc-online.org
(UPC Letter Re: Takoma Park Farmer's Market Addition of Animal Products)
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