Reading through PigProgress.net, “Your Portal On Global Pig Production,” is a strange experience.  Their blog ranges from mundane things like “pellets vs. meal” to “Salmonella testing – is it going to cause a problem for you?” and discussions about piglet tail docking.  They have a section on gestation crates and feature ads for companies that make “agri-housing” for animals (lots of images of chicken buildings and pig buildings therein).  Overall, though, the tone of the site is much tamer than similar ones from other industries.

What baffles me, though, is their “pigculular news” section which features supposedly off-the-wall stories about pigs, but which really ends up reinforcing the idea that pigs are smart, sentient beings.  It surprises me to no end to see the industry promoting stories like “Pet dog cares for discarded piglets” and “Piglets take on art world.”  Of course, they also have unfortunate stories like “Alabama boy, 11, kills giant pig” and “Pig bladder helped man regrow his fingertip,” but overall, the tone of the stories are the type you might expect to find on an animal rights blog.

Very weird.

All animals are worthy of our respect and maybe stories like this one out of Alaska will help others begin to grasp that.

A 50-ton bowhead whale was caught off the Alaskan coast last month.  In him was a very old weapon fragment that experts used to place the age of the whale at between 115 and 130-years-old.  A hundred years ago, this whale survived a shot by whale hunters and roamed the oceans for a century, wearing the weapon fragment like a badge of honor.  Bowhead whales can live to be 200-years-old, making them “perhaps the most aged animals on Earth.”

Unfortunately, this particular whale met his match last month when hunters killed it with a similar weapon, which is described in the following terms:

The 49-foot male whale died when it was shot with a similar projectile last month, and the older device was found buried beneath its blubber as hunters carved it with a chain saw for harvesting.

“Harvesting” is one of those terms that should limited to grains and vegetables, not sentient beings.

According to the article, whales are a primary source of food for Alaskans and a hunting quota has been renewed to allow 255 whales to be killed by ten Alaskan villages over a five year period.

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Since I’ve started following the policy of not approving every crackpot that comments on an entry, the studpidity level has decreased pretty significantly. But every so often, there’s still one of those comments that I’m definitely not going to approve, but I want to share with you all for a laugh. Because really, it is just that funny.

The post starts off by referring to everyone that’s commented on this post as “Peta freaks” and then proceeds to lay into PETA with some legitimate gripes as well as some outdated or misinformed ones, all with plenty of terrible spelling and grammar (of course). That stuff has been covered a million times before, so let me just jump to the most interesting part of the comment, where the guy goes from the typical anti-veg rant to a raving loon:

i don’t care if you don’t want to eat meat or eggs, that is your right. but to put up posters and say that eating meat makes you fat when literaly billions of studies show that meat is a necicary part of your healthy development and not consuming meat products can lead to osteoperosis and bone caner, aids, rhinovirus(common cold) ,and yes i will bring in the a word, AIDS!

Wait. Not only does he claim that not eating meat causes “bone caner” (that’s got to be a euphamism for some creepy sexual act), but he blames AIDS (twice!) on “not consuming meat products.” But I guess we should believe him because there have been “literaly billions of studies” done. Billions!

The commenter then says that he’s “a well informed liberal, left wing, democrat, who doesn,t like to see abuse any more than the next man” before jumping to the completely unrelated topic of unchaining domestic dogs.

Gotta love it.