Philadelphia Phillies center fielder Shane Victorino loves Spam. So much, in fact, that the native of Wailuku, Hawaii, goes as far as to anoint Spam musubi his favorite food in the entire world.
The food, which is made of Spam, salted rice, and nori (dried seaweed), looks slightly disturbing to me, but I’m not one to judge food. The real news is why Victorino’s professed love for it is making headlines.
Apparently, with the Phillies’ success in the postseason comes increased attention from groups such as People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. The group took it upon itself to alert Victorino of certain practices it witnessed at a pig farm in Iowa that supplied Hormel (the manufacturer of Spam) with pigs for its products.
The group sent a letter to the speedy lefty, telling him of the farm, how supervisors “beat pigs with metal gate rods” and spray pigs with a chemical that has cancer-causing substances in it. I won’t get into the grisly details. If you want to read the letter in its entirety, I’ll post it on the Emerald’s sports blog, but the message is clear about wanting him to stop endorsing a product PETA feels supports cruelty to animals. (Of note, the farm is not part of the Hormel brand – it’s a supplier. Hormel just buys from that farm and many others.)
The assistant director of PETA, Dan Shannon, wrote the letter, and when asked about it by the Philadelphia Inquirer, he responded in a note, saying:
“We suspect that the cruelty in every can of Spam will infuriate Shane more than a high Hiroki Kuroda fastball. If Shane likes Spam a lot, he should buy tickets to the Broadway play but leave it off his dinner plate.”
I find it amusing that he uses Hiroki Kuroda as his example and Monty Python’s Tony-winning play, but the absurdity of PETA’s attempts to get Victorino to quit eating Spam is astounding. I’m as animal-friendly as the next person, but if PETA was so concerned about why one Major League Baseball player liked Spam, you would think it would have been sending him letters for months. Scratch that, you would think it would be sending letters to all professional sports players who like Spam.
Or why doesn’t the group take it one step further? Why doesn’t it send letters to every athlete who likes burgers? Or chicken, because it’s the same thing. PETA is concerned about the treatment of animals in factories where they are slaughtered for food, and it even says on the group’s Web site that “animals are not ours to eat.”
I guess this is the new world of sports. Groups bombard athletes over their personal choices, and no matter what they do, someone is going to disagree with them.
It’s not like Victorino got into a booze-induced scuffle with his bodyguard at a party (Adam ‘Pacman’ Jones anyone?). It’s not like Victorino was accused of smoking pot, taking steroids, or trash-talking the national anthem like Josh Howard did. No, Victorino eats Spam.
If that’s all it takes to draw the ire of PETA, it should file a complaint against the entire state of Hawaii because Hawaiians love it. My eighth-grade English teacher grew up in Hawaii and she made Spam sandwiches for kids all the time.
I know to some degree athletes have to be weary what they tell the public because it can come back and hurt them, but Victorino is just a normal guy who has a favorite food. Would PETA write him a letter if he said he liked scrambled eggs, because the group’s concerned he might be eating eggs that come from chickens that aren’t cage-free?
This is detracting from an amazing sports story in baseball. Victorino is having an incredible postseason. He has the Phillies on the cusp of their first pennant since 1993, and the Tampa Bay Rays are handling the Red Sox (oh, yeah). The World Series will be an interesting spectacle, filled with new faces and stories.
It’s not that I’m not trying to paint PETA as the bad guy; I’m just saying PETA should cool it. It’s honorable that it feels so strongly about this subject, but I’m not going to quit eating hot dogs at ball games anytime soon.
PETA or anyone else can email Ben at [email protected]