The Caldwell County News - April 25, 2012
Opinion/Editorial
Page 2
In defense of horse slaughter Dear Caldwell County News,
Killed by corruption By Lisa Parris
The eye always sees more than the mind can comprehend. In the aftermath of the earthquake, I reached a point where I had simply seen too much. My mind began to lighten and brighten each vision, leaving a less dark, less sharp version of the truth in its place. Even this was difficult to bear. I saw five days pass without a single rock being moved from the pile. The town received no food, no water and no relief. It is a wonder any of us made it. I saw parents dying from grief and worry- though their hearts continued to beat. I saw men in orange jumpsuits arrive after almost a week and begin the slow process of moving the rubble. I saw them pull backpacks out of the debris and carry them towards the crowd of grief-stricken parents who were driven to their knees by the weight of their grief. I saw them carry small bodies in another directionaway from inconsolable family members. As the pile of backpacks grew bigger, those who had survived the quake grew more despondent. During the daylight hours, Lily and I would stand and bear witness to the tragedy, waiting for any word of her family. During the evening, we would wander back to my apartment. The cracks in the walls and the floors grew bigger with each tremor. But who was I to complain? At least my building was still standing. According to rumor, the majority of the relief workers who had been sent to our region had been killed in a landslide as they tried to clear the road between the village and city of Chengdu. The soldiers had been told to wait for the professionals. They were told letting villagers assist with rescue efforts could make the problem worse. They did as they were ordered. They stood fast and held off the crowd.
Behind the Great Wall Part 24 of a Series In what remained of the village, there was talk everywhere of greed and corruption; of cutting costs and cutting corners; of government officials who did not care what happened to the poor or to their children. We arrived one day to find hundreds of grieving parents, standing on top of a mountain of backpacks, holding photos of their children; silently protesting the shoddy school construction. Local officials were moving from person to person offering more than $8,000 US dollars to anyone who would sign a contract agreeing to never speak of the school construction issue and not to disrupt the rescue and reconstruction efforts. Some of the parents turned their backs, some yelled at the officials, some spit in their faces- none of them signed the papers. The police arrived next and gave everyone two minutes to leave. When the parents refused to budge, they began to push and drag them. Those who fought back were placed in patrol cars and taken to jail. News from the outside world arrived. 7,000 schools had collapsed, primarily in China’s rural regions, while buildings less than ten yards away stood with nary a crack. More than 100,000 children died that day. Another 400,000 were injured and more than 30,000 were listed as “missing”among them Henry and AnMei Cavandish. The government would not admit it yet, but I knew my Henry- the man who brought me flowers for no reason and sang to me until I smiled- was gone. That was the terrible
truth of the matter. And I did not have the heart to tell Lily. She still had hope. I could see it in her face each morning as we approached the school. I could hear it in her voice as she sang herself to sleep. “This is my story, this is my song, praising my savior, all the day long.” The words travelled each night from her room to mine. I didn’t have it in me to take them away. But it wasn’t just for her sake. It was for mine, too. The most important things are always the most difficult to say because saying them makes them real. On nights when Lily could not sleep we would climb up to the roof of my apartment building and sit under the starspeckled sky, counting stars and listening to frogs and crickets. The darkness softened the jagged edges of the day, muting the too-vivid colors. It hurt so much to think about my family, I tried not to think about them at all. I was certain they had heard about the quake and were beside themselves with worry. I had asked to make a phone call home- just to let them know I was all right. My request was flatly denied. I told my director I would not teach classes until I was allowed to call home. He told me classes had been cancelled anyway so my threat was pointless. My Mom always said that life was not about how fast or how far you could run, it was about putting one foot in front of the other and moving forward no matter what. Life, my mom says, is about perseverance, so persevere I would. I did not know yet where I was going or how I was going to get there or what I would do once I arrived. I knew one thing only. I was leaving China and I was taking Lily with me. Henry had married her mother so that she could have a chance at a better life. I intended to see that she got it. ❦
Out of the Past in Hamilton April 12, 2007 Members of the Kingston Church of the Nazarene admit to an emotional Easter weekend, as they were able to hold services in their newly constructed sanctuary, following two weeks of church in the new basement and many weeks of services in the basement of the Caldwell County Mutual Insurance Co. building. The old church burned in July of 2005. In a reorganization meeting following last Tuesday’s election, members of the Hamilton R-II Board of Education chose Jessica Green as the groups new president
and Rex Hibler as vicepresident. In a special session Monday, members of the Polo R-VII Board of Education honored outgoing Board President Marla Barnes with a reception. She served eight years as the board president. April 10, 2002 Caldwell Tank, the firm contracted to build Hamilton’s new water tower, brought in a crane last Thursday and by mid-morning, the entire structure was in place and ready for welding. The tower will be completed sometime this summer.
A court hearing to set up a board of directors and certify a ballot proposal and tax levy for a new fire protection district in Caldwell County was postponed last Thursday after residents in rural Cowgill presented a petition to be excluded from the new entity. State Senator James Mathewson and Rep. Randall Relford will be holding a multisite series of informal town meetings this Friday. Three of the four will be held in Caldwell County. Hamilton police made two arrests this week in connection to a Saturday morning burglary at Hamilton Hardware.❦
The Caldwell County News Continuing The Hamilton Advocate and The Braymer Bee Vol. 142, Issue 44, Wednesday, April 25, 2012 Published weekly at 101 S. Davis • P.O. Box 187 • Hamilton, Missouri 64644 Phone (816) 583-2116 • Fax (816) 583-2118 • e-mail: news@mycaldwellcounty.com Web Page:www.mycaldwellcounty.com (USPS 233-500) L&L Publications, Inc., Owner Incorporated under the laws of Missouri AUGUST 6, 1985
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Staff: Anne Tezon, Editor and Publisher; Debbie Rankin, Production. Cindy Fickess, Circulation; Lisa Parris, features editor; Dennis Clark, Distribution.
I would like to start off by saying that I am usually very impressed with your newspaper. I am a frequent reader, we have often used your paper as an advertising source for our business ventures, and I sometimes contribute articles. All of my experiences with the paper have been positive ones. Which is why I was so totally appalled by your recent article entitled, “Gallatin horse rescue saves horses who cannot save themselves”. The article is chalk full of both misinformation and outright lies. Moreover, in a predominately rural agriculturally supported community this anti-ag and antipersonal liberty article does not fit with the community or the general integrity of your paper. My refutation points are below: 1. In November (not October) of 2011 President Obama did sign a bill that allowed U.S. inspectors (after a five year ban) to once again inspect horse meat for slaughter. However there are NO operating horse slaughter houses in the US at the present time. 2. The ban did not stop horses from being slaughtered. According to the USDA, nearly 100,000 equines were exported from the U.S. to Mexico and Canada in 2008 for slaughter. The number increased to over 100,000 in 2009, and nearly 120,000 in 2010. So now horses have to be hauled extremely far distances. This increases the suffering experienced by horses. Also most of the exported horses are sent to Mexico where there are no humane slaughter laws like we have in the U.S. Many are stabbed in the spine to make them a paraplegic prior to being killed. 3. Your article quotes a statistic that is in fact true. 80% of horses (EXPORTED) to slaughter are in good physical condition. People want to eat animals that are healthy. Now many of the horses may have conformational problems, partial blindness, or behavioral issues but they generally are in decent body condition. So, the idea that a rescue taking in horses that were
Letters to the Editor seized by authorities for neglect, is saving them from slaughter is ridiculous. The majority of rightfully seized horses are emaciated and are not wanted for slaughter. On a side note using a statistic provided by the American Humane Society which is decidedly antiagriculture seems biased to me. 4. Also I seriously question the care that horses are receiving at this rescue due to their inappropriate stocking rate. 28 acres is way too small of a place to have 26 horses. The general rule is to allow at least two acres per horse, If the rescue chooses to forever keep horses and not allow that horse to be available for adoption that is considered horse ownership not rescue. They therefore should not be asking for a handout to care for their personal horses. 5. In the article there is a picture of a horse that is available for “adoption”. Their Facebook page lists the adoption fee for the pony as $300. If you sell a pony for $300 (at or above market price) you are not a rescue you are a horse trader and should not be asking for handouts from either the government or the community. 6. I can only assume that the rescue has received limited assistance or donations because most horse people realize that the slaughter ban increased horse suffering on a massive scale and put many good people out of business. In fact, Farm Bureau, the American Quarter Horse Association, American Association of Equine Practioners, and American Veterinary Medical Association all support domestic horse slaughter. As a lifelong equestrian who has spent my life caring for horses let me assure you that I want the best for them. I have personally bought, trained, and re-sold many horses out of the kill pens of auction barns. The best thing that can happen for horses is that horse slaughter be allowed to reopen in the U.S. (there is still much legal and political work needed to make this happen).
When people like the owners of this rescue got the ban in place it hurt horses. It dropped the bottom out of the market and caused horse prices to drop from about $1 per pound to the current average of .13 per pound. This is significant because the bottom price was the lowest price most people would accept. The ban made many horses worthless and glutted the market with unwanted horses. Unfortunately people don’t always provide great care to animals who they literally can’t giveaway. Did you know that it often COSTS money to sell a horse at sale barns now? To make matters worse the economy is in trouble, much of the country suffered a drought, and corn is at record high prices. The only solution that will actually work is to allow the unwanted horses to be humanely killed in Temple Grandin designed horse slaughter plants. The United Horsemen is very close to making this a reality. In the same way that kill-shelters are needed for dogs and cats, horses also need a humane method of euthanasia. One difference in the species is obviously their size. With much of the world and many residents of our country food insecure I don’t think we should waste that much meat. I am a big believer in civil liberties. I feel like a person should have the right to choose the method in which they euthanize their animal. If people want to eat a horse that is their right. This agenda is spear headed and massively funded by Humane Society of the United States. HSUS’s end game is the elimination of production ag and pet ownership. The horse slaughter issue is simply a stepping stone in their animal rights (anti our way of life) agenda. I would like to appeal to member of the community to not support the Painted Trails Equine Rescue or any other animal rights driven organization. Sincerely, Jennifer Gatrel Polo, MO 660.232.1280❦
The difference between having a salad shooter and being one There are two errors that beginning gardeners often make. 1) Planting too soon and 2) planting too much. When it comes to lettuce, I made them both. Over a month ago, I filled my garden with greens; butter crunch lettuce, romaine lettuce, red leaf lettuce, black seeded Simpson, celtuce, oak leaf lettuce- you name it, I planted it. Then, lo and behold, it grew. And it grew and it grew and it grew... The seedlings were small at first, but about a week ago the leaves started looking like food. And since I had gone to all the trouble of growing it, I figured, I might as well eat it. I grabbed a plastic grocery store bag and wandered out into the yard, thinking, with luck, I could pluck enough young leaves for a small side salad. In 30 minutes time I had filled my bag- and the garden looked like it had never been touched. I took my bag inside, gently washed the leaves and enjoyed a mixing bowl sized chef salad. It was so good; I had the same thing for lunch the next day and dinner the next night. It seems that lettuce is the “gray hair” of the gardening world. When you pull one leaf, two more grow in its place. In spite of my constant plucking, the garden continued to grow. By the weekend, I was trying to get everyone I saw to take a bag of it with them. And what they didn’t take, I ate. With every healthy bowl I grew more smugcertain I was undoing years of bad eating habits with each bite. It turns out “healthy” is a relative term. There are scientists all over the Midwest who are convinced a volcano bubbling just beneath the surface of the earth is going to explode and kill millions of people. Well, so will eating buckets filled with greens.
Dirt Cheap By Lisa Parris Especially if your normal fiber intake is something like 2 percent of the recommended daily allowance and has been for, say, ever. There comes a point when any item, no matter how healthy, becomes too much of a good thing. My point came that weekend when I, salad-eating idiot that I am, ate my sixth big bowl of lettuce in three days time, then hopped in the car to delivery excess greens to my sister. As I drove, I mentally prepared a speech that would dazzle her with my newly gained gardening insights and healthy lifestyle choices. Yeah. Me. The woman who considers crunchberries a fruit. In my own defense, it sounded really impressive in my head. Anyway, off I went. Highway 13 is a decent drive if you’re not in a hurry. Nice houses, eye-catching sceneryÖ but this time of year, odds of getting stuck behind a slowmoving piece of farm equipment in a no passing zone are pretty good. Odds of this happening when you’ve got a gastrointestinal bomb ticking away in your gut are astronomically high. As I eased in behind an old John Deere that was chugging down the blacktop at a whopping 35 MPH, I felt the rumble of 10,000 PSI of methane gas passing through the twists and turns in my digestive tract. Instinctively, I began to clench. The urge to go was not like an ordinary urge- you know, where you have a chance to think about it while you decide what type of reading material you’d like take with you. No- this was nothing that leisurely. It was intense and immediate. There was nowhere to stop. I
had already passed the last gas station between my sister’s house and mine. For five miles I drove with every muscle of my body tightened and taut. When I reached my sister’s house, I threw open the door and ran for the bathroom. Think cannonballs, thundering elephants, stampeding zebras, troops of tap dancing girl scouts... all I can say is, the relief was instantaneous. And then, I heard the laughing. My sister’s children were amused by the acoustics. Oh, Ha, ha, ha. Embarrassed, I opened a window and waited for them to go away. But as soon as they caught their breath, ran outside and began serenading me from beneath the window “When you’re sliding into first and your pants are gonna burst, diarrhea! When you’re riding in your Chevy and your pants are getting heavy, diarrhea! ...” The song went on and on until my sister finally heard them and scolded them for being rude. I sat in the bathroom, head in my hands, waiting for the floor to open up and swallow me whole. But it didn’t, so I gathered what remained of my dignity and decided to simply ignore them for the remainder of the day. Anyway, the moral of the story is, no matter how healthy it seems, never, never, NEVER eat an entire garden’s worth of lettuce unless you want to die... of embarrassment. Should you choose to ignore this well-thought-out advice, be sure to check out next week’s article: Skid marks- when to wash ‘em and when to toss ‘em. Hey, it happens. ❦
Correction The horse rescue article printed on April 18 should read “In November,” rather than “In October.” ❦