Hackles vs.heroes

Food-animal initiative raises hackles

Jim Klinker says the biggest hurdle he and other foes of Proposition 204 have is that many Arizonans have never been on a farm and have no idea about where the food comes from that reaches their tables.

Half of that's probably close to the truth. But the other half is just a load.

In fact, the executive secretary of the Arizona Farm Bureau Federation said he thinks that people may have completely the wrong image. They may imagine that the animals slaughtered to make bacon or hamburger have lived out their lives frolicking in the grass and wallowing in the mud.

They don't have the "wrong image." They have your images, the continued discovery of which you're lobbying to criminalize at the federal level. The ones over which you litigate and seek to jail investigators to prevent their findings from ever seeing the light of day. Like your boxed-up newborn calves and your pigs in their steel and concrete containers, for the duration of their existence until the day they're trucked away to die.

You couldn't have built a better political enemy than yourselves if you had blueprints and an even heftier government-backed loan, and for that we're eternally thankful. See ya on Election Day!