Photo by safaris (Creative Commons

Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock somewhere, you’ve probably heard about last week’s gruesome stabbing and decapitation aboard a Greyhound bus in Manitoba, Canada.

Now, famously provocative animal rights group PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) has tried - and failed - to run an ad in a Manitoba newspaper, comparing the murder to slaughterhouse practices in the meat industry.

Said a PETA spokesperson:

“Like human victims, animals in slaughterhouses experience terror when they are attacked by a knife-wielding assailant.

We are challenging everyone who is rightly horrified by this crime to look into their hearts and consider leaving violence off their dinner plates.”

Call me politically correct, but I don’t see how it’s appropriate to compare a 22-year-old murder victim to a steak, before the young man in question has even been buried.

And to attempt to run the ad in the same region where the killing took place only adds salt to the wound.

I’m all for animal rights, but it seems to me that some activists are so zealous about protecting animals, that they do so at the expense of human beings.

That goes for the anti-whalers who spray Japanese sailors with acid, the eco-terrorists who firebomb animal testing facilities, and - yes - the PETA advertising hacks who didn’t think twice about a murdered young man, his family, and a traumatized community.

After all, aren’t people also animals deserving of ethical treatment?

Eva Holland

Eva Holland is co-editor of Matador Pulse and a regular contributor to the Matador Network. She's also a contributing editor at World Hum. Eva recently quit her day job and gave notice on her apartment, and is currently bouncing around Eastern Ontario, Quebec and upstate New York.