What’s with the title [“Please Kill Me,” June 29]? It’s really disturbing. Is that supposed to be the farm animals talking or a human being’s interpretation of what the animals are saying? Either way, it’s an offensive and disgusting title for this article. Are we supposed to care that there is a lack of an organic slaughterhouse to help kill these animals? Slaughterhouses are despicable killing fields for animals en masse.
The pictures of [Stan] Schutte with his animals–a friendly cow giving him a kiss and a pig looking up contented–are hard to look at in the context of the article below that discusses killing them and how to do so “organically,” as if somehow that’s kinder or more appropriate than conventional killing methods. The picture of chickens piled on top of each other is at least a good depiction of factory farming without the Old McDonald tones of the other two pictures. The animals Stan Schutte cares for and trots off to a slaughterhouse to be turned into somebody’s dinner suffer a cruel and inhumane fate, organic slaughterhouse or not.
Linda Widmer
Chicago