Surprise! When you reduce animals to the status of things, they tend to get treated like…things.

I don’t want to get all vegetarian self-righteous here, but here’s a thought. Thanksgiving is, among other things, about, well, giving thanks to the Author of our being. And surely part of that thanks-giving is treating that which we receive from the Creator’s hand (in this case, animals for our sustenance) as gifts to be reverently received and treated accordingly. Do we do honor to the Creator by turning his creatures into commodities, things in a mechanized process that denies their very existence as living, sentient beings? I hope that we can all answer “no” to that.

(By the way, this is an example of good work by PETA, despite their sometimes questionable marketing tactics.)