New Year's Eve

Undercover Footage Exposes Butterball's Cruelty to Animals

Please visit Mercy for Animals' Butterball Abuse page to sign a petition demanding Butterball treat its animals humanely and with compassion.

Happy Holidays!

AAVS

Many non-profit organizations solicit year-end donations while sending holiday greetings to their supporters. I've noticed that this year, I've received more electronic messages than holiday cards sent in the mail. While I sometimes miss the actual cards being a mail junkie, I know that email is better for the organization's budget as well as to preserve natural resources. 

I thought this greeting from the American Anti-Vivisection Society (AAVS), a group dedicated to ending the use of animals in experiments, was precious. AAVS sponsors Animalearn, an initiative to provide alternatives to dissection in science classes. They also work to educate consumers on cruelty-free products. The Tina Nelson Sanctuary Fund provides grant assistance to sanctuaries that provides shelter to animals previously used in laboratories. 

AAVS is a group worthy of a year-end donation. What a wonderful way to celebrate life and peace on earth!

Museum of the Earth

Quotation of the Day

"This is what you shall do; Love the earth and sun and the animals,"

~Walt Whitman

Norman

Quotation of the Day

"If a being suffers, there can be no moral justification for refusing to take that suffering into consideration."

~Peter Singer

Animal Rights in the Classroom

On Wednesday, we are scheduled to discuss animal rights as they relate to business ethics. Perhaps I should be more excited about covering this with my students, but I am too close to the subject. In thinking about the upcoming class, I was reminded of an incident in my MBA program.

In my Operations Management class, we had to give group presentations on a topic related to the course. (I can't remember at all what my group's presentation covered.) One day, a group helmed by a student I remember as a jerk presented on slaughterhouse waste. I suppose that the topic was legitimate, and perhaps not even controversial in an Oklahoma classroom, but the group treated the concept as a joke. To me, the death of animals is never a joke, and in fact, the entire premise of slaughterhouses is immoral.

I had to leave the classroom until the presentation was over. It's bad enough that animals are killed in a cruel and inhumane manner, but to laugh about it? This is what they found so humorous:

Unforgivable.