What the Fair’s Livestock Auctions Teach the Children

* To all the children at the fair who are crying as the animals they raised since birth are being loaded into the slaughterhouse trucks (“From Pet to Pork Chop: Facts of Life at the Fair,” July 23): It doesn’t have to be that way.

There is a humane and loving alternative to killing animals. It’s called vegetarianism. Compassion for animals is a sign of our humanity. Adults should be ashamed for trying to teach children that such feelings are wrong.

KATHRYN TARBELL

Fountain Valley

* After the hysteria over People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals’ “unhappy meal” campaign earlier this summer, it’s striking that there’s no comparable uproar over the Orange County Fair’s Junior Livestock Auction.

Many condemned PETA as thoughtless when it attempted vividly to convey to children where hamburgers come from.

People called PETA manipulative for telling children about vegetarian diets they could enjoy without harm to animals. All this was considered upsetting for children.

Yet no one seems disturbed that the children who raise pigs, sheep, cows, etc., for sale and slaughter are learning--through much emotional pain--to squelch their natural compassion for animals.

These children are being taught to value money more highly than an animal they’ve come to love. That pigs become pork chops is a fact of life only because people are willing to raise, sell, kill and eat these animals as food--practices with bleak effects not only on animal lives and human sentiments, but also on our health and environment.

So the Junior Livestock Auction teaches children to shove their compassionate feelings to the side to go along with the status quo.

PETA teaches children to use their compassion to question the status quo. No wonder people are angry at PETA: Compassion and independent thought often lead to change.

LARA WERTHEIMER

Irvine