Children

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 1997:

The Royal SPCA and
British Customs are struggling to
intercept imports of “squish”
videos , in which models typically
wearing spike heels crush animals.
“It is of particular concern,”
RSPCA inspector Martin Daly told
Cassandra Brown of the Sunday
Telegraph, “that many videos
apprehended by Customs have
belonged to people who were [also] found to have tapes containing child
pornography.” Jeff Vilencia of
Calfiornia-based Squish Productions
told Brown, “I tell the models they
can squish anything in the pet shop
as long as it is part of the food chain
of another animal.” Vilencia said
he had about 600 customers, 38 of
them British. Similar material is
sold via the World Wide Web.

The 5.4-million member
4-H Club in October announced a
campaign to “broaden its image
away from the barnyard and the
kitchen.” Two aspects of the traditional
4-H program, both retained,
are widely criticized for desensitizing
children to cruelty: hunting,
trapping, and shooting instruction;
and the longtime core project of
raising animals for fair entry, who
then––according to 4-H rules––must
be sold to slaughter, a process
designed to inure participants to
routine cultivation and betrayal of
animal trust as a part of farming.