PETA: Tax Meat!
I cannot stomach PETA's ideology--views symbolized by the disgusting comic book aimed at kids depicted here--but I sit in awe at its leaders' propaganda and advocacy skills. They never miss a chance to get their message out. Now, they urge that meat be taxed to reduce global warming. From its press release:With our proposal, a typical meat-eating family of four would only pay about $5 per month, and a chunk of that would likely be absorbed by the large meat companies. (And if a family did replace some of their meat consumption with healthy vegetarian foods, they would likely save hundreds or thousands of dollars in medical expenses over time as their health improved.) Revenue from a meat tax could be used to fund educational programs about the health and environmental benefits of reducing meat consumption.
There will never be such a tax. But it gets PETA in the news and its message out. These people are committed!
Labels: PETA
posted by Wesley J. Smith @ 12:43 PM
15 Comments
15 Comments:
"There will never be such a tax."
A couple of decades ago I'm sure the same was said about taxing tobacco. This might just morph with the "free" health care for all movement as a way to improve public health.
PETA is just a small part of the national socialism taking deeper roots in the US. BBQ those steaks while you still can....vegans will likely try to ban the second hand smoke from your grill next.
Mort
"These people should be committed!"
There, fixed that for you.
Talk about a long month - never work in a deli the two weeks before Christmas! ::cracks her knuckles and gets down to replying::
...Sweet Mother of Holy Cow! That comic book is a bit *too* gruesom, Wesley! I understand where you're coming from, but dang... That wasn't what I wanted to see when I popped online.
Incidentally, when you cut up a fish like that, it doesn't really look that way. And why in the world is the guy wearing a suit and tie in that scene?
As to a meat tax, what about those of us who raise and eat our own animals (rabbits, chickens, some pigs, etc)? They'd have to put a tax on owning any animal to cover any animal you might consider eating if folks decided to start raising their own livestock for food. And that means folks who don't eat meat but have pets would get taxed... it'd be a mess.
A tax on meat for consumption is a bit far-fetched; you're right, it won't happen. But it gives people something to rally around when they want to strike out at us carnivores/animal murderers.
Incidentally, out here in Houston there's an Asian grocery store with a bunch of tanks at the back of the building housing hundreds of giant catfish, crabs, lobsters, you name it. (I'm picky about where I buy my wasabi.) Went shopping there and happened to be near the fish counter when someone purchased a catfish, and had the misfortune of seeing it be beaten with a sledghammer so it could be weighed and sold. I suddenly remembered why I stopped sport fishing and only fished for food (sport fishing you try to get the biggest fish you can, and big fish you have to beat to death. Little fish only take one wack).
I'm thinking that part of PETA's success is straight culture shock. Folks who aren't used to seeing something like that will freak out because they over-empathize.
I think if more people sat and watched animals in the wild (a fox eating a fish isn't a pretty sight), they'd be less alarmed by the way humans act toward animals when harvesting them. TV puts too much distance between us and the reality of the wild. And if humans are animals (as so many in PETA assert) then we aren't any different from the fox that eats a fish very messily. If we are different, though, then we have to be responsible in how we treat animals and leave each other alone about how we live.
They have one with a mother stabbing an innocent rabbit. On the inside of the fish "comic" they warn the kids that if their dad fishes, he might kill the pet dog or cat.
TE Fine-- I think they'd be down with taxing pets...or jail time for pet owners....
I do think that folks freak out way to easily from seeing animals being used out of context.
I had a fight with one gal I knew about how it's "inhumane" to cut off sheep's tails-- she ended up suggesting that we wash the tails everyday, if they "really did" tend to get maggoty, otherwise. (death by blood poisoning isn't nice, y'know)
These nutjobs simply don't believe animals should be domesticated, and they will do anything in their power to see their crazy goals become reality.
Susan--
It's that "Anything goes" that worries most of us.
When, say, some nutjob shoots an abortionist, the pro-life folks condemn him; when some nutjob harms folks in the name of "saving the animals," these guys *cheer* for him.
Well, that and their tendency to try to use schools and laws to force everyone to do the outrageous, unnatural things they want.
Foxfier -
I know they'd be cool with taxing pet ownership or any general animal ownership, but look at the statistics. More people in the US own pets than don't own pets - even small parakeets or rats or other tiny animals that are caged count. To keep people from breeding rodents for food (rabbits *are* categorized as rodents, arent' they? I'm having a senior moment), they'd have to tax even the littlest animals, and all birds since some birds are edible.
That means that the majority of people in the US would have to pay a tax they would protest, and they'd show their protest through voting against anybody who held any of these policies.
So I'm thinking that a tax on owning any livestock would fall flat, just because of the numbers of folks who have all kinds of pets. Which means *if* a meat tax were imposed, then people who harvest their own livestock would become more popular, and that would just muddy the whole water. Eh.
I think they are rodents, because of the teeth. Sec, I'll google.
....Rodentia does not include rabbits; rabbits differ from rodents in having an extra pair of incisors and in other skeletal features. Rabbits, hares, and a few other species make up the Lagomorpha. Shrews, moles and hedgehogs are also not rodents; they are classified in the Insectivora.)
Bother, no... but your point does hold.
So you start with a tax on "food animals"-- perhaps justify it as because of the "enforcement costs" for law enforcement when folks mistreat their food animals?
You don't worry too much about enforcement, because you cast it as mostly going after "Big Ag" or some such junk.
Maybe make a choke-point at the butchers-- start with an exemption for hunted meat, then "close the loophole" in five-ten years, when it's become accepted. (Most meat animals have to be professionally butchered-- not many folks HAVE a cold house to hang meat in, or the tools to cut it.)
If you cast it as the government "subsidizing" feed lots (leave ranches out of it for the moment, because cowboys are still cool), due to the "high cost" of investigating them and making sure they're complying with safe food practices...you could cast it as a public health issue pretty easily.
Foxfier -
Yeah, I'm glad you brought all that out. I knew there was something nagging me about the whole thing but eh. I really, *really* don't want them to start taxing meat any more than it already is, since it's not cheap here. But if somehow a tax on meat did arise, I suppose people would move back to keeping small livestock for food purposes. One of my neighbors raises rabbits and pidgeons for food, for example.
Ooo! What about ritual slaughterers for the Jewish community? Would they have to be taxed? Jews can only get their food from approved butchers and places that guarantee that the food is kosher. If you add a tax onto their stuff, which is already hard enough to come by, then couldn't they complain about religious discrimination?
I over-think I guess. LOL
It's something I worry about - it's hard enough to adopt cats and dogs due to their needing to be fixed, and their shots, and they need to be groomed regularly, etc. Having to pay a tax every year on them would be... insulting, I think is the best word. And if PETA works on taxing meat then they can move on to taxing ownership of harvestable animals, and then on to pet ownership, trying to make it too expensive to own pets.
Sometimes, you NEED to over-think things.
Frankly, I wouldn't get a pet from any of the places I've been to try to adopt-- they kept insisting that a half-grown cat was the youngest "kitten" they could adopt out, and that they had to be properly socialized with other cats. (A recipe for trouble, if you're only going to have one kid.)
There ARE far too many funky rules.
My approach in all this is simply to try to lead by example. I figure that if people who already think (I hope) that I'm a normal, decent person then learn that I don't eat meat or wear leather shoes or kill insects, that it will be a benefit to how my beliefs are perceived. I think that does more good to the cause than throwing red paint and getting in people's faces, which could cause people to rebel against the message and actually start wearing MORE leather/fur, and eating MORE meat...
bmmg39: you are absoultely right, that such coercion is counter productive. You are following Gary Francione's "abolitionist" approach, and that is to be respected.
bmmg39: you are absoultely right, that such coercion is counter productive. You are following Gary Francione's "abolitionist" approach, and that is to be respected.
PETA is such a joke that it's hard to figure out where to start dismantling their nonsense. However, one place where they really need to "put their actions (or money) where their mouth is" is the protesting of ALL carnivores. If the president of PETA really does believe that "a rat is a pig is a dog is a boy", then there is NO difference between a human and an animal. Following that logic, instead of them protesting hunters in the woods, why aren't they protesting bears, wolves, coyotes and badgers? How about protesting hawks and owls? They should picket them, yell at them, throw red paint on them, etc. etc.! And, if they're NOT willing to do that because it's "natural" for those animals to hunt, kill and eat other animals, then what is wrong with humans doing the same thing? We either are the same as animals, and therefore it's OK for us to do so, or we're the same as animals that if they can protest hunters and meat eaters, then they surely MUST protest, harrass and bother meat eating animals. I rest my case...
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