Thank you to Carl Mason for his recent letter encouraging compassionate, plant-based food choices for Labor Day festivities, with the added benefits of improving the health of individuals and the health of the planet. This summer, in our country, we have experienced a breathtaking resurgence of the attributes that many of us thought were lost forever: kindness, compassion, empathy, respect, and optimism for the future. Please let us extend these values to the millions of animals who suffer and die each year in factory farms, to the wild creatures in the forests and the fish in the seas who are killed for sport, to animals kept outside in blistering heat and freezing cold without adequate shelter, and for all other animals who suffer.

Creating a more compassionate world for our animal friends requires advocacy through legislation, both national and state, pursuing justice through the courts, and raising public awareness. Thirty years ago when I was first involved in legislative advocacy for animals in New Hampshire these efforts were non-partisan. We had many amazing advocates on both sides of the aisle. That is no longer the case. An examination of roll call votes on animal protection bills in this biennium reveals minimal support from Republican legislators. My prayer for the new legislature is that kindness, empathy and compassion will be viewed, by colleagues and constituents, as strengths of character, not weaknesses, in lawmakers on both sides of the aisle.

Jean Slepian

Stoddard