The only surface glitch in the reappearance of this Los Angeles Pierce College course offering seems a semantic one. Farm animals in our urban Los Angeles and Ventura areas are companion animals and our urban farm animal facilities are either private homes housing compassionate families or publicly-accessible sanctuaries staffed by least harm volunteers.
Companion goats, sheep, pigs, chickens and cows don't feel the slice of the scalpel wide awake and screaming, the pain of constriction as their tails and testicles slowly necrotize and fall away, or the searing burn of infant flesh that would have become their horns. They don't experience the newborn terror of being dragged from their frantic and bellowing mother's side only to be locked away alone and fed from a bucket. They never succumb to the helplessness and futility of existence in a barren steel and concrete container only slightly larger than themselves. They aren’t lured, prodded and shoved toward the grinding gears of batch-mode disposal. That’s a whole other side of the coin.
Companion farm animals aren't intentionally repopulated to be killed in the churn of back-yard animal agribusiness production. Back-yard breeding is something we thought the city of Los Angeles sought to curtail. Maybe we were wrong. Maybe you’ll let us know. Or maybe we just can’t read.
How do we know all this stuff? We actually see urban farm animals. All the time. We treat them and care for them year after year. And in the end we’re there as they peacefully drift away, cradled by those individuals and organizations that are demonstrative examples of what it truly means to cherish their existence.
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