CAPITOL-PORK PROTEST

Jan. 13/99
AP
By CASSANDRA BURRELL
Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON-- This story explained that Capitol police rounded up 12 members of an animal-rights group Wednesday after they set bales of hay afire on the Capitol steps to protest government plans to help the pork industry. Capitol Police spokesman Dan Nichols was cited as saying that two of the 12 were arrested after the incident on the lower west terrace and charged with igniting an incendiary charge on the Capitol grounds, arson and destruction of property, all felonies.

Nichols was cited as saying that nobody was hurt.

Michael McGraw, a New York-based spokesman for PETA, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, was quoted as saying, "The pork industry is a violent and bloody industry. It should be outlawed, not subsidized." This story explained that after District of Columbia firefighters put out the flames, they shoveled up the damp hay as tourists milled about on the Capitol's west steps. The protest area was blocked off with yellow police tape, and the protesters, including a man in a 6-foot-tall pig costume, sat inside the tape.

Traveling through Iowa last week, Vice President Al Gore was cited as saying that the government would give $50 million in direct payments to pork producers struggling because of record low prices. An additional $80 million will be used to buy diseased pigs to help ease the industry's oversupply problem.

PETA was cited as considering that "taxpayer-funded corporate welfare" and wants Congress to slash spending on the industry, McGraw said. The group had, according to this story, a permit to bring the hay to the Capitol grounds for the protest but not for setting it on fire.

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November 1998



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