THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT 
              Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: Tuesday, October 18, 1994              TAG: 9410180008
SECTION: FRONT                    PAGE: A14  EDITION: FINAL 
TYPE: Letter 
                                             LENGTH: Short :   37 lines

NOT AS NATURE INTENDED

``Animals are, well . . . animals'' (letter, Oct. 7) equates cats killing mice and birds eating worms with human beings eating other animals. I once shared this view, that this is just the way ``nature'' was intended to operate. That was before I read Animal Liberation. To read it is to be introduced to the world of absolute misery that animals endure on ``factory farms.''

Animal Liberation reports that pigs, which are very social animals and are as intelligent as dogs, are kept for months at a time in stalls so small they are unable to turn around. They have no contact with other animals. Baby calves are taken from their mothers when they are a few days old and are placed in crates where they are virtually immobilized and kept deliberately anemic to ensure tender meat. Laying hens are packed in small wire cages, several to a cage, and kept by the thousands in huge windowless sheds until they are loaded onto trucks to be killed.

There is nothing in these animals' lives that remotely resembles the way nature intended for them to live.

Because the animals live in such unnatural conditions, they must be given large amounts of antibiotics to control disease and infections. This is unhealthy for the animals and for consumers.

We should all become better informed about what is happening in the food industry, cut down drastically on our consumption of meat and demand more humane conditions for animals.

MARTHA SIMKINS

Virginia Beach, Oct. 11, 1994 by CNB