People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals has demanded that Major League Baseball stop using the term “bullpen” to describe the place where relief pitchers warm up. Instead, it wants the league to call it the “arm barn.” PETA doesn’t like the term bullpen because it refers to the area where farmers keep bulls before slaughtering them, according to a press release from the organization.
The suggestion is absurd, and it shows PETA’s lack of seriousness as an animal rights organization.
MLB having a bullpen isn’t responsible for killing cattle and people consuming their meat. That’s happening because there is a market for cattle meat. People enjoy eating steaks, hamburgers, prime rib, beef ribs, and more. If MLB were to stop calling the bullpen the bullpen, that wouldn’t change the global demand for beef. When people think of the bullpen, they’re not thinking of bulls in pens, they’re thinking of a place where pitchers warm up. Plus, it’s a term used in baseball generally, not just one league. If MLB were to stop using it, other leagues would likely still use it.
This hollow gesture aside, it’s not the first time PETA has wanted to make changes to terms used by sports teams.
PETA wanted the Green Bay Packers to change their name to the “Pickers” or the “Six-Packers” in 2000, a nod to either picking crops or the state’s lucrative beer industry. PETA said that the team name promotes violence against animals because the name refers to the meatpacking industry. So, instead, PETA wanted the Packers to promote and normalize alcohol — as if professional sports teams indirectly advertising alcohol to minors isn’t already a problem.
Surprisingly, PETA was OK with the Washington Redskins (now known as the Washington Football Team) and didn’t advocate for a name change. Instead, PETA wanted the Redskins to change their logo from a Native American to a redskin potato. That way, they could keep the name and not offend liberals with it.
These suggestions are a way for PETA to get attention. However, these empty gestures don’t promote animal rights. PETA often seems counterproductive because it makes the animal rights movement into a joke.
PETA promotes false information, falsely linking dairy to autism and trying to compare sheep shearing to killing animals for their fur. Shearing a sheep can actually prevent sheep from experiencing health problems.
This is the same PETA that has no problem with kill shelters for dogs. There are better ways to address the dog overpopulation problem in the United States, such as neutering/spaying, than euthanizing young, healthy dogs. At least when people kill a cow, they’re getting use out of it — be it leather or meat. Eating dog meat is both taboo and often illegal in the U.S., so those killings are arguably worse than the deaths of other animals.
There are valid questions about the ethics of eating meat, but changing the name of the bullpen or the Green Bay Packers doesn’t solve those problems. It makes an organization that already kills dogs look even less serious.
Tom Joyce (@TomJoyceSports) is a political reporter for the New Boston Post in Massachusetts. He is also a freelance writer who has been published in USA Today, the Boston Globe, Newsday, ESPN, the Detroit Free Press, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Federalist, and a number of other outlets.
