Giving animals a voice.

• Author: Friedrich, Bruce
• Position: WE HEAR YOU - Letter to the editor

What a treat to open the latest issue of The Progressive and find Karen Dawn's article on animal protection (December/January issue). Of course, other animals are made of flesh, bone, and blood, just like human beings are. They have the same five physiological senses that we do, and they feel pain, in the same way and to the same degree.

Primatologist Jane Goodall explained in her foreword to a book about farm animal ethology: "Farm animals feel pleasure and sadness, excitement and resentment, depression, fear, and pain. They are far more aware and intelligent than we ever imagined and, despite having been bred as domestic slaves, they are individual beings in their own right." The very least progressives can do is to stop eating them.

--Bruce Friedrich

Washington, D.C.

Sad that so few animal advocates are involved in the legislative process. Sad, too, that animal and environmental issues are not more bipartisan. I recently perused the bios of all 120 members of the California state legislature. Only three noted...