Animal Cruelty Along the Food Chain

Thanks to columnist John Balzar (“Cruel Slaughter of Food Hits a Nerve,” Commentary, July 13) and venerable U.S. Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.), the tide finally may be turning in efforts to obtain humane treatment for so-called food animals. Byrd’s recent speech on the Senate floor addressing the president of the United States, and Balzar’s column referencing that speech, attest to the fact that animals have long suffered to meet America’s insatiable appetite for meat.

Lack of U.S. Department of Agriculture oversight and factory farming procedures have cost animals dearly. They live their short, unnatural lives assembly line-like, barely able to stretch or lay down in their pathetic confinement. They die, sometimes being sliced apart while still conscious. They are treated merely as nonfeeling “products” in our fast-food society.

While moral arguments can be made whether we should eat our fellow creatures, there can be no question as to how living and breathing animals should be treated on their way to our plates. At the least, they deserve a comfortable existence and painless death. We are grateful to Byrd and Balzar for having the courage and compassion to voice their concern on behalf of the animals.

Phil Nawroth

Ark Trust

Encino

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People need to read between the lines of Balzar’s excellent commentary that the publicly held corporate mode of maximizing profits above all considerations, which has such horrendous effects on that animal portion of our world that goes into food production, is similarly affecting the human population of the world, billions of whom are undernourished and/or starving in countries that are subjugated by our command of their resources, which we accomplish through the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and other such institutions basically under our control. When will Byrd, or any other senator in our Capitol, raise that issue? I think we have a way to go before enough of us connect the dots.

Kenneth Reiner

Long Beach