When 9 lambs disappeared from their pasture there were no organized search parties, no flashlights waving about in the darkness, no ears cocked to hear a distant bleat, no portraits on milk cartons.
OLIVIA MESSER: ‘When nine sheep disappeared from their pasture in Yellow Springs, Ohio, there were no volunteer-organized search parties. No flashlights waving about in the darkness, no ears cocked to hear a distant bleat, no portraits on milk cartons. The months-long battle between the impassioned activists who hoped to save the animals, and Antioch College — who planned to slaughter them — will end with a three-hour vigil in honor of the lambs. Because [it is believed] the animals are dead… The lambs were part of a “living laboratory” and sustainability program on the Antioch College Farm, and the school said that—once they matured into sheep—they would feed students in the nearby dining hall.
Over the next several months, fevered activists led by Dr. David Nibert, a neighbor of the college and a sociology professor at Wittenberg University, conducted a relentless campaign to save the creatures’ lives. They offered to buy the lambs, found a place willing to re-home them, collected more than 88,000 signatures on a Change.org petition, sent impassioned pleas from over 100 scholars, bought television commercials depicting bloody lambs in slaughterhouses, and peppered the liberal arts college campus with countless protests, fliers, emails, and phone calls.
Nibert’s campaign caught PETA’s attention, which led the animal-rights group to write an open letter to Antioch College President Tom Manley comparing the “senseless violence” of killing the lambs with the mass shooting in Dayton, Ohio, on Aug. 4, in which 10 people were killed and 27 others were injured… Matthew Hamity, campaigns director at In Defense of Animals, claimed that the school’s refusal to acknowledge the death of the lambs was evidence that it “implicitly recognizes the obvious truth: no amount of transparency can transform killing into kindness.”
Antioch College has refused to confirm what happened to the lambs to The Daily Beast or to anyone else… In a statement, a spokesman said “Even as the Antioch College community endured harassment and death threats, we gained enormous support from people locally and across the country as they learned about our internationally-recognized farm-to-table dining program and sustainable farming practices. We continue to be proud of our educational program where principles of ecological agriculture and self-sufficiency are explored”.’ SOURCE…
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