A popular farming and livestock program at a primary school in Kent may be shutdown after the student council voted to ignore objections from parents and animal activists and have a six-month-old lamb named Marcus slaughtered for cash. The 14-member council composed of 6 to 11 year old children voted to turn Marcus into chops and to use the money to buy pigs for the program at Lydd primary school.
The children reared Marcus from birth and then shocked parents by announcing their decision to cull Marcus. He is a castrated lamb, so he cannot be used to expand the herd. The children also manage ducks, chickens, rabbits and guinea pigs. The children were managing their stock and making the type of decision that farms (as opposed to zoos) make on the use of such animals.
Animal activists are insisting that Marcus should be used to teach kids about wool production and are now calling for an end of the program entirely.
The school has defended the children and noted that farms cull animals and that the children are making the type of decisions that are inherent in such an operation.
A good point, but they may want to consider what some English schoolboys did to a Piggy:
For the full story, click here.
Humans as carnivores may fall out of favor over time.
I think that eventually we may see a tax on greenhouse gas emissions related to consumption of animals and animal products. For all the angst about auto fleet MPG standards and clean burning coal, the reality is that meat eaters produce 1.5 tons more in carbon dioxide per year than vegetarians do. Raising livestock produces more greenhouse gases than all of transportation, and accounts for 37 percent of methane and 65 percent of nitrous oxide produced annually. This is driven by the production of grain to feed for the animals, and the emissions of the animals themselves.
Baaaaad, capitalists. All animals are equal, but pigs, it seems, are more equal than Marcus.
these children have much more sense than their parents and elders. Expand your enterprise and create jobs and value (lamb chops) for others.
Marcus will not have died in vain, his death teaches children about the virtue of making a profit. All Hail Marcus.
Mespo72^3:
do you have that Jefferson comment on the comman man? the one that says, I think, generally “I will put my faith in the common sense of the American people”
puzzling:
please keep that under your hat. I do so love a medium rare ribeye or porterhouse. Soy burgers just do not compare.
Byron:
I do and here it is, but I suspect even Jefferson would have paused after surveying today’s “common man.”
The quote goes, “If the obstacles of bigotry and priestcraft can be surmounted, we may hope that common sense will suffice to do everything else.”
The condition precedent apparently has yet to be satisfied among today’s rabble.
Veal lucre …
Mespo72^3:
Thank you, but I dont think that is the one. Maybe I am thinking of another founder. The quote talks about putting faith in the average people of the country to do the right thing under bad circumstances. Franklin maybe or Madison?
Dredd:
don’t you mean l”ewe”cre. We can stretch it a bit since Marcus is sans stones.
What a dumb story. As a proud member of the La Luz (N.M.) School 4-H Club in 1957 I raised and slaughtered two pigs as a project. I am constantly amazed at the extent to which parents will go to prevent their kids from learning that the animals we consume must first be killed.
Mike A.,,
I am with you as a FFA. I realize not all schools were equal and you had that sissy side to it called 4-H. I raised show pigs or swine as you may. It was a venture all into itself. And PETA complains about livestock raised for meat. PETA People Eating Tasty Animals.
I also was in Horticulture it helped out during the 70′s a lot. 75 greenhouse nursery. Things could get grown green vegetation year round.
hey we almost have a manyan.
I was in FFA in high school also.
it was a glitch, okay? I needed 4 more units and animal husbandry seemed cake and besides the guys were built and hot.
anyway, on real farms, real farmers do this all the time. they slaughter lambs to pay for pigs. they slaughter lambs for dinner.
did these people think that they were running a petting zoo?
Byron:
I don’t believe Jefferson had the faith you mention in the common man. He wrote to James Madison, “Above all things I hope the education of the common people will be attended to; convinced that on their good sense we may rely with the most security for the preservation of a due degree of liberty.” (Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 1787)
Jefferson understood an uneducated mass is ruinous to democracy and only an educated populace would preserve one. He said famously, “I have so much confidence in the good sense of man, and his qualifications for self-government, that I am never afraid of the issue where reason is left free to exert her force.” (Thomas Jefferson to Comte Diodati, 1789).
Reason was the sine qua non, not common sense which may or may not be reasonable.
Mespo72^3:
thank you. Having been influenced by the enlightenment I would say they would be believers in reason above all else.
To bad there are no Jefferson’s and Madison’s around today. But then there are no educational institutions that are teaching Greek, Latin, and the old dead white guys such as Cato, Cicero, Plato, Aristotle, Socrates, et. al. within a conceptual framework.
Animal rights activists and libertarians both ought to all be rounded up and shipped to Somalia. Perhaps after surviving there for a decade or so, they’ll understand where they went wrong…
FFA in the family (one of my uncles was national president back in the 50(?)s!), and sheep for 4-H for many years for me. If my father (the bank ag agent) hadn’t died (he was crest-of-the-wave 50′s avalanche of heart disease), we probably would have graduated to beef, too.
I think the school’s program is GREAT! Realistic, and a good idea in this day and age. These kids will have some real-life experience to base their future judgments about greenhouse-gas influence of CAFO’s on!! What, is this the first time some of these parents realized the farm program was a REAL FARM program, and not, as someone else mentioned, a “petting zoo”?
Here’s hoping sanity rules, rather than “keep our kidlets dumb and “innocent” of real life”!!!
To All:
You know that schools are going back to some part of vocational education. It is called charter/magnet schools. Not everyone is cut out for main stream education. If it had not been for FFA I would not have graduated High School. Something about attendance policy, still don’t know what that means.
Somehow or another I managed to only miss 1 day in 2 years as opposed to going to school valid excuses I tell you, but none the less still cut 98 days in 9th grade and 99 in 10th. School or Home? Humm, hard choice back in the 70s and I think some here know what I am saying. When I took the tests I did good enough to make the A/B honor roll, what more could a parent ask?
Note to students: Go to class. Take notes. Let the rules of Civil and Criminal Procedure. They are the score cards that you are judged by. Just let the Judge you know them better than they do. Well hell, at least you read them. You can win a case on Procedure. And another note, if you know the rules of civil procedure you have a heads up on the Prosecutor as Rules not in conflict control. Or at least the 2 states that I have practiced in.
Byron:
“To bad there are no Jefferson’s and Madison’s around today”
*************
There are plenty around. They just don’t get booked on the O’Reilly Factor. Read John Ragosta, Esq. sometime:
http://www.adamsjefferson.com/papers/Ragosta_final_7_09.pdf
Mespo:
Thank you for the link.
mespo:
very interesting read. It goes with my take on religion in colonial and pre-colonial America. But I do not read into this a prohibition of a manger scene in front of a public building. In my mind it seems to encourage any religion (I doubt even Jefferson could anticipate Scientology) to put up a public display of what they deem appropriate for their religion. At the very least it does not appear to restrict public observances. He even talks about taxes and how people should not be forced to pay for what they don’t believe in. This is not a document of religious freedom only but appears to underpin individual liberty.
Jefferson’s The Virginia Statute for Establishing Religious Freedom reads like an approbation of individual liberty unencumbered by state prohibitions. It is not only about religion, this document can be applied generally.
I think Bob McDonnell needs to read it and also the article you linked to. Anyone who reads those documents would not write an essay like the one he wrote.
Jefferson anticipating Scientology?
ROFLMAO
ROFLMRKOMN (rolling on the floor laughing my ruptured kidneys out my nose)
Oh man, that’s just too funny to imagine. I’m thinking it might have made the poor man apoplectic! But when the coniption fit over Scientology’s madness stopped, oh would L. Ron be getting an ear full. lol
“On occasion of learning about the tenets of your new religion, Mr. Hubbard, I am inclined to consider you either a feeble minded fool, a lying charlatan, a criminal mastermind or possibly all three.”
It would only go down hill from there.
Thanks for the laugh, Byron.
I’ll still be giggling about that tomorrow.
Buddha:
L Ron was, in my mind, a genius. He was able to persuade people that we are the left over souls from some civilization light years from our planet. That people even believed him is a testament to his salesmanship.
Now it could be that the souls he was selling were utterly feeble minded and in need of some or for that matter any direction.
I have seen first hand the impact his religious philosophy has had on someone I know, it was not good and I consider Scientology a monstrous evil.
My name is Alex and I am from New Zealand. I love the UK in spite of its terrible animal welfare laws which last year alone allowed 3.5 million cats, dogs and monkeys to suffer in cruel experiments at the hands of cold hearted lab researchers.
I know it’s money that buys off the politicians each year allowing these monsters to do what they do ( even in the face of new research that proves these animals think, feel and suffer as we do ) but this group of kids voting to kill their former pet friend saddened me more.
Desensitising the Young is exactly what this is geared to do but it will have wide ranging effects even affecting the depth of their future relationships because what they really put to death was the only emotion that really made them human, Empathy. On that note I wrote an email note earlier adding it to my signing of the petition to fire the person who had through questions ( and they must have had questions put to them in order to arrive at a conclusion ) led a group of kids to a so called logical pragmatic decision which would affect the life of a lamb who had played and trusted every one of these kids( see my email below ).
As an important footnote to this whole sad affair I wanted to add this thought. There is one sure way of knowing whether it was right or wrong for this group of kids to vote on whether Marcus should live or die. Would you have had them watch him be killed? I hear the answer from here yet the voted to put a living being to death not having ( I think ) any real concept of what that meant. Only seeing the killing would they have truly realised the fate they had consigned Marcus to. Were adults to have voted on such things they would have had a pretty good idea of what awaited Marcus. After all I’m sure he wasn’t euthenised as he could not then have been eaten.
But children?? I believe if these kids had seen Marcus put to death after months of kindness toward him they would have cried and retracted their vote. But it would of course be all too late. Sadly, in a few years time they will come to know what they did. And it will go two ways. Either they will have learned to devalue the life of another being regardless of the fact that for a short time they may have cared for that life and his wellbeing, or they will feel regret.
In NZ we have been debating the clear correlation between cruelty to animals and later in life offending toward other humans. Notably the lack of empathy exhibited towards the pain of their victims ( real science maintains empathy is proof of evolutionary development ). The ability to feel anothers pain. If a man or woman can put themselves in the shoes of a being that is suffering and imagine the pain and fear they are feeling it would affect the way they treated that being ( which tells you all you need to know about researchers that can pour draino down a dogs throat to test a new chemical )!! That said I finish by saying a sad bad mistake was made at this school. I pray we can learn from it. Yours in life. Alex!! ( see below for my earlier email ).
Dear Sir I live in New Zealand and love the UK but understand it has many challenges. One of the keys to a brighter future I believe is the gift of empathy. Higher on the evolutionary scale than intellect or I.Q. it is the one thing that can see past a cost-benefit analysis and look at how we’re treating each other and the vulnerable around us. Killing Marcus was a desensitising act that sets a child up to ignore the pain of another creature. Here in New Zealand and in many parts of the world acts of cruelty by children to animals have led to violence against people later and this correlation is fact not fiction or specul;ation. These kids are more likely to hut the dog or cat as a result of this without considering the pain that is being felt. These kids are too young to have been given such a choice and consensus must have been led by the teachers involved to line up with economics rather than any other outcome. The impact of this is far reaching. I do not wish to attack the farming sector but this lamb should have been the exception just like many lambs kept as pets by farmers and their children. You do not teach kids to befriend and care for something and then teach them that that lamb is expendable. It’s quite simply horrific. Close the program and sack all ibnvolved. Yours Alexander
Mike A.
In all fairness to the protectionist parents, you don’t HAVE to kill an animal before you eat it. It just makes the job much more difficult and usually a little dangerous.