Animals Headed for Dinner Table

So Al Martinez’s delicate sensibilities are offended by those whose goal is humane treatment of animals (“PETA’s Got a Bone to Pick With Carnivores,” Aug. 20) and billboards that suggest that eating meat isn’t the healthiest thing in the world. Well, tough.

He doesn’t have to change his diet if he doesn’t want to, but his annoyance is no reason that animals, even those destined for the dinner table, shouldn’t be treated humanely while they are alive. These are still creatures with feelings, and are capable of suffering even if they can’t articulate it.

“As long as we keep humanizing food animals ... we’ll continue to worry about how they’re treated,” Mr. Martinez writes, as though this is a bad thing.

If he doesn’t lose any sleep over it, fine, but to suggest that we humans should simply not care is barbaric.

STEVEN A. WELLS

Glendale

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While the fantasy of farm animals frolicking about in nature is attractive to those of us with softer hearts, the brutal reality is that these creatures would not last five minutes in the wild.

Babe the pig would be toast for a larger animal with sharper teeth and claws. Fact is, farm animals live much longer and die far less brutal deaths when they are raised by farmers--as they have been for centuries.

PETA is an extremist organization that uses shock, deception and pseudo-science to push its agenda, and it appears to most of the public to be misguided and fanatical. Its leaders would be less self-serving and more effective if they would concentrate their efforts on improving conditions for livestock, instead of this ridiculous campaign to make us feel guilty about our place in the food chain.

GREGORY D. STANTON

Los Angeles