Re: "Scene & Heard: Professional agitators can't claim to be a 'grassroots' movement anymore" by Kimberley A. Strassel (OpinionJournal.com, 13 December 2001). Regardless of the relative size of our nonprofit organizational budgets, the "David-and-Goliath" description of the relationship between powerful corporate-political interests and what Guest Choice Network (an advocacy voice for restaurants and bars) calls the "Nanny Culture" is accurate. The "Nanny Culture" comprises all groups working to protect those elements of the world, considered precious by many, that are at risk in societies that value consumerism and moneymaking above everything else. In the 19th century, the "Nanny Culture" would have included the Abolitionists, suffragists, the ASPCA, labor unionists, and others working to reduce the misery of the world and to legislate fairer treatment for the disenfranchised. Today the "Nanny Culture" includes the animal advocacy movement, environmentalists, even child protection organizations like Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD).

Anyone who is interested in the organizational budgets of the animal protection community can go to our own watchdog. Animal People's Watchdog Report on Animal Protection Charities (www.animalpeoplenews.org) publishes the finances of the 150 most prominent animal and habitat-related charities and foundations each December. If we are "nannies," Guest Choice Network representatives (like Richard Berman and David Martosko) come across as spoiled spoon-beating babies, whose only vision of life is the right to gobble without being gobbled. I recently met a 200+-pound dyspeptic Guest Choice Network representative who regards stalking groups (like mine) that hold Vigils for suffering farmed animals as time well spent. Signs saying "Let Animals Be Our Friends, Not Our Food" and "Compassion Over Killing" really get their goat. These people may have the "goods" on us "nannies," but they are such sourballs-who cares? It is they, not we, who have no sense of humor and who come across as utterly joyless and spiritually dry. Maybe that's why their cause is gorging and "spirits."

Karen Davis is the author of many articles and books including, most recently, More Than a Meal: The Turkey in History, Myth, Ritual, and Reality (Lantern Books, 2001). She is the founder and president of United Poultry Concerns, a nonprofit organization promoting the compassionate and respectful treatment of domestic fowl. www.UPC-online.org.

United Poultry Concerns, Inc. PO Box 150 Machipongo, VA 23405-0150 757-678-7875 FAX: 757-678-5070 www.upc-online.org (UPC Letter Re: WSJ Journal Article on the "Nanny Culture")

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