THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, October 29, 1995 TAG: 9510290042
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B5 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY CINDY CLAYTON, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH LENGTH: Medium: 67 lines
Twenty years ago, processed chicken meant money for college and a car for Kim Stallwood.
Chicken, Stallwood says, helped him begin a career in the restaurant and hotel industry in England.
Chicken was occasionally on his dinner table.
But today, as a vegetarian and an internationally known animal rights activist, Stallwood still reflects on that summer in 1974 when, as a college student, he worked in a chicken processing plant.
``I could never bring myself to go and see the killing,'' he said.
Two years of animal rights debate with a college friend finally persuaded Stallwood to become a vegetarian. In 1976 he quit the restaurant and hotel industry and began working to promote animal rights.
``I abandoned the career because I could no longer justify that as a profession,'' Stallwood said in his room at the Virginia Beach Resort and Conference Center.
A former executive director of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and now the editor of a magazine called The Animals' Agenda in Baltimore, Stallwood was in Virginia Beach Saturday to address members of the Alliance for Animals in Virginia.
The focus of his talk, he said, was to encourage the activists to lobby politicians and to get the animal rights movement on as many political agendas as possible.
``Animals are an example of those who cannot defend themselves. The laws in this country are either few or nonexistent regarding animals' protection,'' Stallwood said.
Armed with five major priorities, Stallwood hopes to inform and educate lawmakers about the needs and rights of pets or ``companion animals,'' animals in education, science and entertainment, and wild and free-roaming animals.
``Animals are not property. In their own right they are due respect,'' Stallwood said. Referring to an animal as a pet demeans its status, he said.
Companion animals, as activists refer to them, should not be viewed as ``toys or playthings,'' he said.
Stallwood would like to see an immediate ban on the chaining, de-clawing, de-fanging and drugging of animals used in the entertainment industry or in zoos.
``We should no longer be collecting and exhibiting them. The fundamental question is, `What is the motivation for doing what you're doing with these animals?' ''
Stallwood also would like to see bans on breeding, testing, mutilation and inhumane confinement, some of which he saw when he worked in the processing plant.
Nearly 8.25 billion chickens and turkeys are bred and slaughtered each year for human consumption, he said. ``I would argue that they should never be bred in the first place.''
Bans on hunting and killing of wild and free-roaming animals were last, but not least on Stallwood's list.
Hunting, he said, interferes with ecosystems and is not an accurate way to control animal populations.
A solution already being tested, he said, is animal birth control. ``If we can do it for ourselves, for God's sake, why can't we do it for them?'' ILLUSTRATION: Photo
Kim Stallwood
by CNB