Fair’s Facts of Life: Shame on Parents

* Re “From Pet to Pork Chop: Facts of Life at the Fair,” (July 23):

Every year I go to the fair, and every year I’m amazed that parents still encourage and promote 4-H Clubs and the raising of livestock by their children. At the end of this “glorious” experience that includes the cuddling, bottle-feeding and grooming of cherished animals like Thumbelina and Squirt, they end up sold to the highest bidder and slaughtered.

The mentality of these types of organizations seemed darn bent on corrupting and desensitizing the minds of the young, innocent and impressionable. In the 1940s, ‘50s and maybe even into the ‘60s, the raising of livestock might have once served to expose children to careers in agriculture, but this is a “dying” art.

This year, 301 animals were sold at the fair auction. There are now 301 kids brokenhearted, and inevitably traumatized by this ordeal. Just because the kids are reaping some blood money by the selling of their beloved animals doesn’t make this OK. Children shouldn’t be expected to participate in the murdering of animals.

If parents really want to teach children where food comes from, make the children personally accompany their animal to the slaughterhouse and watch the whole process from start to finish. If that happened, I guarantee these archaic clubs would vanish.

Why are we teaching children that it’s OK to love and adore the family dog or cat, but a pig or calf is simply dinner? I imagine these children unfortunately growing into callous, unfeeling adults without a true respect for life. Shame on the parents. Let’s step out of the medieval times and into the light of the millennium.

CHRIS HEIN

Huntington Beach