We’ve all heard this familiar cant from animal rights activists — if people actually had to see how animals were slaughtered there would be few, if any, meat eaters. Well, one University of California Berkeley student decided to take that message to heart and slaughtered a chicken in front of classmates as part of a project for an undergraduate art class.
Loren Partridge, acting chair of the UC Berkeley Department of Art Practice, told the Contra Costa Times,
He was making the point that we’re . . . so removed from the production of food that we see it as Kentucky Fried Chicken or Twinkies, but that there are plants and animals be hind it.
. . .
It was felt by everybody to be in extremely bad taste and not the kind of thing that can be condoned in the classroom.
But it does seem exactly like the sort of thing that animal rights groups would be glad to see. Here’s someone putting the slaughter of animals right in the face of meat eating consumers. Alas, though, that was not to be.
The Berkeley Organization for Animal Advocacy called for the arrest and expulsion of the student as well as the suspension of art instructor Kevin Radley (despite the fact that Radley apparently had no prior knowledge of the fact that his student planned to slaughter a chicken).
BOOA member Julie Ahren told the Contra Costa Times,
The fact that this brutal slaughter occurred, especially in a classroom setting, is simply unacceptable. BOAA is demanding that the student be expelled from the university for this obviously cruel act and prosecuted for the possible violations of California Penal Code 597, which prohibits cruelty to animals.
But the Contra Costa Times reports that the Berkeley East Bay Humane Society already reviewed the case and decided not to pursue charges against the student. The student was reprimanded by the university.
Source:
Cal student’s art project offends many. Carrie Sturrock, Contra Costa Times, April 2, 2003.
Chicken killing angers activists killing ruffles feathers. William Brand, The Argus, April 3, 2003.