When I wrote about David Cantor and his Responsible Policies for Animals a few weeks ago, that was the first I had heard of the group, but I happened across an article the other day from April 2003 when the Arizona Daily Wildcat reported on the group’s March 2003 letter to universities demanding that they abolish animal agriculture programs.
One of the recipients of that letter was University of Arizona President Pete Likins. The University of Arizona has a campus agriculture center which includes a meat sciences center.
University of Arizona animal sciences department head Robert Collier pretty much summed up the entire animal rights movement with his comments about Cantor,
I don’t think they really understand what they are talking about.
The University of Arizona agriculture center includes more than 360 dairy cows, 30 horses, and other animals. The university offers degrees in veterinary medicine and research.
The Arizona Daily Wildcat quoted Cantor as saying,
Teaching animal agriculture primarily serves the interests of large private corporations, whose activities are extremely harmful yet profitable and not in the public interest — they should be training their own workers and managers, not relying on university agriculture programs to do so.
Cantor also told the Arizona Daily Wildcat that he was disappointed that the president of the University of Arizona had not yet responded directly to his letter,
One of the key functions of universities in the United States is to serve as venues fro the free marketplace of ideas. For universities to fail to examine their animal-agriculture policies, discuss them openly, and reckon with the harm they are doing would be a terrible disservice to the public.
Universities have the same sort of duty to respond to complaints that their animal agriculture departments are cruel that they would have to respond to complaints that their geography departments won’t seriously consider the possibility that the Earth is flat.
Source:
Animal rights group wants UA to cut animal sciences program. Bob Purvis, Arizona Daily Wildcat, April 22, 2003.