Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, October 9, 1995                   TAG: 9510100042
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: 1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: BEN BEAGLE
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

NOTHING LIKE FEELING GUILTY ABOUT A T-BONE

It's all my fault. As a person who has dedicated his life to public enlightenment, I should have told you about it. Listen. Am I supposed to do everything around here?

Anyway, what we're talking about here isn't pretty. When we're through, you'll probably never touch a T-bone again.

The fact is that farm animals are being mercilessly slaughtered so that you can have a T-bone if you can afford one. We need to get Sally Struthers in on this kind of thing.

Let me know if you can go home tonight, kick off the loafers, have a belt or two and eat a nice rump roast dinner after we get through.

The Farm Animal Reform Movement - which cleverly shortens to FARM and sponsors the day mentioned above - says that if you eat meat, you're responsible for the "abuse, killing and butchering " of 2,424 animals during your wretched days here on this planet.

Put down that steak knife. We're not through here. The animals killed will include 12 cattle and/or calves, 31 pigs, two inevitably cute sheep and 2,287 chickens. And this apparently doesn't include all the Christmas geese that will be slain by all of you gluttons out there.

This is no time to remember the good old days when Mama and Papa raised pigs and chickens and then killed them so that little Gretchen and little Trevor wouldn't die of starvation or become highway persons to feed themselves.

And don't mention Mama's egg money or how she tortured all of those cows to steal the very butter of their beings for mere money and gave them stress symptoms for the rest of their lives.

You see where we're going here. The agricultural tradition that made this country great is all wrong. Your sainted grandfather was not an honest farmer who kept his family fed.

No. He was a bloodthirsty old man who had a bad disposition. He was bathed in the blood of innocent animals most of the time.

You guys who are laughing should have been around when it got cold enough to butcher the hogs and dismember them. The damned barbarians even ate the hog's' ears. And pickled its feet, which were later eaten by good old boys drinking Pabst Blue Ribbon and playing French pool.

The FARM people say the slaughter will get worse, and I'm shocked.

I don't feel guilty enough, however, to start eating broccoli and rice all the time.