Stop the ignorance

This is in response to the campus forum letter, “Factory Farm Responsible for Animal Cruelty,” in the April 1 Technician. Contrary to popular belief, farmers have a passion for their animals and spend a lot of time and money to protect them and prevent illness and injury.

When most people see those pictures of the poor sheep with their tails docked, or the chickens with their beaks trimmed, they feel bad for them and don’t realize that the farmer does this for the animals own welfare. Docking a sheep’s tail prevents feces build up and infection that can kill them. It is not done to torture the animal and after just about a minute, the animal is up and running around again like nothing happened.

Chickens do not get their beaks “sliced off.” They are trimmed, leaving about three fourths of the beak and many people don’t know that this is done because chickens have a tendency of cannibalism. Trimming the chickens’ beaks simply stops them from killing one another.

It is simply incorrect and ignorant to suggest that it is common to see cattle and pigs skinned and dismembered while still fully conscious. In every major industry there will be people who do it the wrong way, and animal rights activist groups are excellent at finding the people in the agricultural industry who even make me sick. If it were honestly like that, even I would be a vegan! But I’m here to tell you, it is not. These animals are these people’s livelihood and are respected.

Jamie L. Jordan

junior, biological sciences

{Editor’s note: the word length on this letter has been waived}.

Unions benefit workers

No one is surprised that the McDonald’s and Wal-Marts of the world have come out against the Employee Free Choice Act, a piece of legislation that would give workers the freedom to choose how to form a union. Even though worker productivity has soared over the last 25 years, wages have gone stagnant. Working families have had to turn to second jobs, credit cards and toxic loans just to stay afloat. Meanwhile, corporate executives squander workers’ increasing profitability on their golden-toilet lifestyles (AIG, anyone?).

There’s no question that we need to bring a sense of balance back to our economy and our places of work. The Employee Free Choice Act would restore workers’ freedom by allowing them to choose if and how they form a union (instead of that choice being in the hands of the employer, as under the current law), enforcing greater penalties on employers who intimidate and harass their workers, and providing a mediator, if requested, to aid in the contract negotiation process.

Why fight for unions? Union jobs provide better pay and benefits to workers than do non-union jobs, secure safe working conditions and establish grievance procedures that allow workers to report discrimination and harassment. We can all thank unions for the eight-hour workday, unemployment insurance, Social Security and the minimum wage.

We must act now to protect our wages and benefits in a crippled economy. We need to protect our workers in these hard times, not with handouts, but by paying them fair wages for an honest days work. If American workers go down, the economy goes down with us. Let’s stop talking about bailouts for Wall Street execs and start talking about greater voice and choice for our workers here in North Carolina. Please join us in supporting the Employee Free Choice Act. To learn more, go to www.employeefreechoiceact.org

Julianne Payne

N.C. State’s Student-Worker Alliance

Animals treated unfairly

While reading Zakk White’s article, “Veganism meat-and logic- free,” from it was hard to tell if this was serious journalism or a late April Fool’s joke. White states in the article that “it is unreasonable to have the goal of relieving the suffering of all animals because if all animals were set free, a possible outcome would be that those who have a taste for meat would illegally hunt the larger animals to extinction.”

Obviously, a vegetarian nirvana is not going to occur overnight and everyone will set all the animals free into the wild and live happily ever after. It’s about humane treatment for these animals. White also explained that “through farming, we are able to control population and protect animals.” Protection for the animals? Animals are drugged to grow as big as possible, as fast as possible, to the point where they cannot carry their own weight.

They are forced to lay in their own filth in cages that they cannot turn around in. Many are conscious while being skinned, chopped and having their throats slit. Maybe Mr. White could have included those facts before stating that veganism is illogical. Just because animals will never be seen as “equal” to humans does not mean they should be stripped of their own rights.

Emily Peterson

junior, textiles