Animals

Banning Shipment of Cruel Images, While Still Shipping Cruelty Itself

by Stephanie Ernst

categories: Cage Free and Free Range, Dairy and Eggs, Farmed Animals, Animal Rights

Published August 07, 2009 @ 03:08PM PT

So apparently, the U.S. Postal Service is considering a ban on publications that include advertisements for cockfighting. That's a good thing, right? Of course. But--well, before we get to the "but," let's take a look at the news itself. From the Associated Press:

The U.S. Postal Service has proposed banning cockfighting advertising from being sent through the mail.

Legal cockfighting ended in the U.S. last year when Louisiana outlawed it. But two magazines dedicated to the practice -- The Gamecock and Grit and Steel -- still are published.

The Postal Service has proposed labeling publications with ads for fighting birds or accessories as ''unmailable.'' The agency says it will take comment on the proposal through the first week of September.

The Humane Society of the United States has been pushing for the change. But it noted Wednesday that both magazines have largely eliminated accessories ads that would be banned.

An official with The Gamecock says he's not sure how the change would affect business. A message was left for Grit & Steel.

Some of you know where I'm going with this, I'm sure, especially given the accompanying photo. Naturally, I don't find fault with efforts to stop the dissemination of materials that celebrate and encourage terrible violence against animals. But, um, is anyone else bothered by what the USPS does not label "unmailable"?

Time to refer back to this Easter-time post on the cruel yet completely legal practice of shipping just-hatched chicks in cardboard boxes via USPS. This is how many baby chicks get to whatever person or company is going to exploit them as egg (and/or flesh) machines. (And yes, this includes most backyard operations, whether chicks are mailed directly to their ultimate destination or to the feed store where they're then purchased.) But isn't that dangerous? Don't some of these fragile young birds die during the trip or suffer injuries? Of course. That's why hatcheries always pack more babies into the box than the customer ordered, to make up for any who die on the way or who are in such bad shape upon arrival that they die soon thereafter. (Read more here.)

So please, someone explain this to me:

It offends our senses to allow depictions of animal cruelty to be shipped through the post office, but we have no problem using the post office for cruelty, to ship actual birds? Cockfighting--that's something cruel that other people do, so we don't want our postal services involved in even the depiction of it. But eating eggs and the flesh of chickens? That's something most people (not those bothersome "others" we look down on) do, so shipping actual live animals of the very same species--after brutally killing half of them shortly after they hatch because they dared to be male, in the case of "egg breeds"; after painfully debeaking them; and before all sorts of other horrible things that humans plan to do to them after they arrive--that's all OK.

Shipping magazines advertising the torment and killing of birds for unnecessary and perverse entertainment: Not OK.

Shipping live birds for people and businesses who exploit, often torment, and kill (or pay someone else to torment and kill) the birds who survive the trip, for unnecessary pleasure of the palate: OK.

Sigh.

[For the record, this post is not in response to the HSUS post on the topic of the potential USPS ban on the publications; I had already written this post, after seeing the AP article, prior to seeing the HSUS post go up.]