Urge Lakeland Animal Welfare Society to Serve a Compassionate Charity Dinner: Sample Letter

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BACKGROUND | SOURCE UPC

Urge Lakeland Animal Welfare Society to Serve a Compassionate Charity Dinner

Lakeland Animal Welfare Society, a nonprofit animal shelter in southeastern Wisconsin, is holding its annual Second Chances Charity Dinner on May 4, 2012, at the Abbey Resort and Fontana Spa. The “delicious seated dinner” includes three entrees to choose from: Grilled Vegetable Tower (vegan), Prime Rib, and Grilled Marinated Chicken Breast.

Please send a polite message to this shelter urging them to replace the slaughtered animal entrees with all-vegetarian entrees consistent with compassionate consideration for all animals including chickens and cows. If you have a great – mouthwateringly delicious! – vegan recipe for gatherings of 100 or more people, send it along. Thank you for speaking out. Our letter is below but we urge you to write your own letter in your own words.

Dear Ms. Perry:

I am writing to you on behalf of United Poultry Concerns to urge you please to eliminate your May 4th fundraiser options of slaughtered animals in favor of compassionate meal choices consistent with the representation of the Lakeland Animal Welfare Society as an organization that cares for abused animals and that seeks to enrich the lives of both animals and people throughout your community.

Chickens and cows are animals. They are fully sentient individuals. They are mistreated by our society every bit as much as dogs and cats, and they feel pain and fear just as much. We are very concerned that your organization would use one group of suffering and abused animals as bait to raise money for another group of suffering and abused animals. Even though our own work focuses on the plight of chickens, turkeys and other domestic fowl, we would not dream of hosting a fundraising dinner made of slaughtered pigs, or raffle a snakeskin handbag in order to raise money to help chickens.

In addition, many animal shelters are dealing with the tide of neglected and unwanted chickens and ducklings due to the recent trend of backyard chicken-keeping and the thoughtless attitude of many that baby chicks and ducklings are disposable Easter toys. Surely the Lakeland Animal Welfare Society extends its good work and goodwill to include these animals as worthy of protective care and public education. Surely chickens and cows deserve Second Chances Charity no less than dogs and cats, don’t you agree?

I have enclosed information that I hope will be of interest to you and persuade you to offer good meals to your donors that are charitable and compassionate to all animals.

Thank you very much for your attention. We look forward to your response.

Sincerely,

Karen Davis, PhD, President
United Poultry Concerns
PO Box 150
Machipongo, VA 23405
757-678-7875
Karen@UPC-online.org
www.UPC-online.org
Recipes: http://www.UPC-online.org/recipes


WHOM TO CONTACT

Kristen Perry, Executive Director
Lakeland Animal Welfare Society, Inc.
PO Box 1000
Elkhorn, WI 53121
Phone: 262-723-1000
Email: kperry@lakelandanimalshelter.org
Email: adopt@lakelandanimalshelter.org
Website: http://www.facebook.com/LakelandAnimalShelter


SAMPLE LETTER

Dear Executive Director Perry,

I have just learned that Lakeland Animal Welfare is sponsoring a fundraising event and is offering the option of dead animals to raise money for other animals. I am therefore respectfully requesting that menu changes be made in order to reflect compassion and ethics with respect to animals.

Please allow me this opportunity to elaborate. Our society considers other beings disposable, to be used as commodities and discarded in accordance with egotistical human-focused goals and benefits. It is within this rigid definition of human acceptability absent accountability that humans embrace speciesism, the prejudicial regard of other species as undeserving of either rights or freedom from exploitation. Speciesism is immoral and dangerous, a precept built upon a foundation of arrogance, greed, and inequality, promoted with solicitous validations meant to foster approval. However, regardless of euphemistic descriptions meant to disguise exploitation, this practice is indeed unethical, the animals being intentionally subjected to pain and then killed. Although you may find the lives of these animals as immaterial and therefore expendable, you should understand they value their own lives and possess the capacity to experience trauma, fear, and suffering, the same as cats and dogs.

This reckless destruction is unnecessary, unjustified, and unprincipled, its only function to benefit those who exploit animals for profit. Animals have rights to live free from pain and suffering regardless of objections to acknowledge such; it is important to accept that what is, indeed, valuable is the life itself and the capability to experience emotion and suffering. Please observe this basic moral principle and act with compassion rather than react with cruelty and serve only vegan items on your fundraising menu.

I know your time is limited and I thank you for your attention to this matter.

NAME

animal charity dinner,
put to the test.
lose the dead,
animal food.
and keep the
humane.
vegetarian,
THE best

Karen Lyons Kalmenson