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FFA programs targeted by PETA
Young men and women in blue and gold jackets gathered this week for the 76th annual Illinois FFA Convention where 75 years of excellence in the Illinois FFA Association was recognized and celebrated. Most of you reading this column have probably been involved with this national agricultural youth organization in some capacity during your lifetime. I have fond memories stretching from my high school years as a member of the Winchester FFA Chapter, membership in WIU Collegiate FFA, and student teaching Agriculture at Bluffs High School. As a farm broadcaster, I have covered chapter, state and national events. I’ve judged speaking competitions and recordbooks, spoke at chapter banquets, and helped to prepare candidates for national officer competition.
Not everyone appreciates this youth organization as much as most of us do. PETA is targeting FFA programs across the country because, according to www.peta.com, “FFA sponsors the raising of animals for slaughter on public school grounds. The FFA program fosters young people’s natural empathy and compassion by having them care for animals, then forces them to sell these animals, whom they have nurtured, for slaughter at the county fair. Because the lessons of callousness that this process teaches have no rightful place in our school system, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals is calling on the Department of Education to immediately discontinue the use of animals in all FFA programs.”
I’m not kidding. Look it up yourself. They call the FFA “inherently discriminatory from its inception” because female students were turned away until 1969. If they had bothered to check the balance of male and female membership in today’s FFA, they would have discovered that, in many states, there are more female than male students in the ranks of membership.
They did get one thing right. PETA says “FFA has now become a major component of rural education, operating within the public school system.” They say it like it’s a bad thing, adding “FFA programs serve up an opportunity for violence on a silver platter.”
I believe FFA serves up an opportunity for citizenship, leadership, animal husbandry, and the list goes on and on. My hat is off to those of you who work to keep the organization alive and prospering.
And if that is not enough, I’m still reeling after learning of an announcement from a Boston, Massachusetts School Committee, banning cupcakes at school birthday parties. Apparently, school officials added this regulation outlawing cupcakes to a new handbook redefining the way students celebrate in class.
Seems some of the parents were upset over their children’s “unplanned cupcake eating.”
These parents prefer their children wear sashes for the day and receive a special birthday pencil. (At least they’ll get a pencil and not something with a computer chip inside to do their thinking for them.)
Instead of playing computer versions of pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey, I suggest they send the little buggers out and tell them not to come back in until they’ve run around the playground five times.
Then, as a famously frivolous queen once said, “Let them eat cake.”
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FFA played a huge roll in my life. From growing up on the farm to what I do today. FFA taught leadership, respect, and much more.
Peta is a fraud, thy profess to be against all animal use/abuse/death yet kill the majority of animals they take in. They are like most bleeding heart causes, hypocrites of the worst kind. FFA is a wonderful program teaching freedom, self-reliance, and independence, all things that leftist are against. Support your local FFA, 4H and other youth farming related programs.