From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1993:
Those of us who have worked with cattle know that there are two ways to get a
balky cow to move. Cowpunchers yell, push, and beat the animal, who often becomes
even more obstinate. Milkmaids by contrast just walk in front of the cow, hands in pock-
ets, and she follows from curiosity. One experienced milkmaid with a pocket full of apples
could probably move more cattle farther, faster, than all the cowpunchers west of the
Mississippi, if she had a mind to, but no one has ever convinced the punchers, who con-
tinue to rave and kick and beat on almost every farm and feedlot.
Persuading the public to adopt humane attitudes and practices often seems similar-
ly frustrating. Problems and solutions evident to those of us in animal protection are
ignored and overlooked time and again by governmental authorities, whether we’re talking
about violence to animals as precursor of violence to humans, the folly of spending mil-
lions for animal control but next to nothing on animal population control, or the hidden
costs of the meat industry to human and environmental health. Undeniably, progress is
being made, and even in comparison with a few years ago, it is impressive in many areas:
the rapid drop in animal shelter euthanasia rates, the decline of sport hunting, the collapse
of the fur trade, and the exponential increase of interest in vegetarianism, to cite just a
handful. Still, the progress can seem as slow relative to the size of some of the issues as
the pace of Old Bossy may seem to a young cowhand who’d rather be traveling at the pace
of a souped-up pickup truck.
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