We need the meat

I am an over-the-top animal lover and have owned and cherished dogs and cats all of my life. All of us should fight animal cruelty, all of the time, especially the media.

Nonetheless, I can't understand why you would cover yet another vegetarian activist and large-scale farming critic who managed to draw 50 people in Chapel Hill. How about a little old-fashioned news judgment before wasting 360 words on Gene Baur's opinion? (story, Oct. 19).

I don't have any argument with Baur's right to eat vegetables all the time, and I too wish we could eat animals without killing them. But the world now has about 7 billion people and they sure aren't going to be fed adequately with spinach and snow peas.

More bothersome is the story's thinly veiled suggestion that North Carolina's 110,000 poultry workers and the more than 46,000 people who work in the pork industry are engaged in wholesale animal cruelty and inhumane behavior. The charge is simply untrue.

Finally, I almost choked on my bacon, egg and cheese sandwich when you reported that "(No critics) challenged Baur at the UNC-CH gathering." That's because pork and poultry employees were at home with their families (and animals), resting after a day's work in progressive and conscientious industries that bring more than $21 billion into our state each year.

Gene Nemechek, D.V.M.

Wilson