The vandalization of Bessie

As a vegetarian, I feel a need to comment on the Iowa Animal Liberation Front’s vandalism of the famous State Fair butter cow. However, I have no clue what to write. Bobblehead offered his thoughts and I have been churning my own (pun intended?) to serve on the blogosphere. Instead, I think will need to shoot from the hip.

To be honest, I thought the tagging of ol’ Bessie was crafty and funny. The butter cow is an institution at the Iowa State Fair and its vandalization in the name of animal rights was both clever and gutsy. Bessie, who can be seen as both bucolic and a symbol of animal exploitation (depending on the lens you use, of couse), was an ideal target. It provided a Nelson-esque “Ha HA!” moment and was completely harmless in the end; everything was cleaned and no one was harmed. In a way it harkened back to the ALF’s brazen attack on the Spence Labs in 2004.

However, the sad thing is that the message was largely missed or dismissed by the public and media. The “wake up call” it intended to make — “You are directly supporting suffering and misery on the largest scale the world has ever known,” the ALF said in a release — was dropped.

(It is interesting to compare and contrast the reaction to Bessie’s vandalization with the public outcry against a planned horse slaughtering facility in Sigourney. The slaughtering of horses was outlawed in the US in 2006, but the ban may be lifted to alleviate the growing population of wild and neglected horses — much to the shock of horse lovers everywhere.)

Obviously, I am not a vegan. I love cheese, drink chocolate milk and eat yogurt everyday, cook with real butter, and probably drink a lot of non-vegan beer. Nonetheless, I am not a fan of the massive animal confinement and meat industry, a driving force behind monoculture, the overuse of antibiotics, and the poisoning of our land, water, and air with carcinogenic and oil-based chemicals. Also, as a gentle and compassionate person I deplore animal abuse. Therefore, I have chosen to be a vegetarian and use the free market to voice my disapproval with my wallet. When I buy dairy products, I try as best as I can to support dairies committed to humane practices. I also do not support animal testing and try to buy household and body products that are not tested on animals.

I agree with Bobblehead that there is a better, more constructive way to get the point across, to show people where their Quarter Pounders come from and how their McNuggets are made. But I think the ALF’s message is valid and hope it prompts others to ask themselves, “Do I support this?”