Opinion : A message for the Iowa State Fair Butter Cow vandals

To: The people who painted the Iowa Butter Cow Red this past weekend, (as well as to whoever it was who put the "Go vegan" message on the Butter Cow at the State Fair in 2011):

Congratulations! Your feat was pretty impressive. Countless fair-goers today are standing in the Agriculture Building, wondering how you were able to sneak in, where there was obviously no public access, to find a way to put your message on the sacred cow (pun intended) of Iowa's most famous annual event.

However, I think you should know that by putting paint (or in the 2011 incident, a piece of paper with tape on it) on the famous cow carved in butter, you were putting a product from a dead cow on a product from a living cow.

That's right: Both red paint and the items used for the 2011 "Go vegan" protest needed products made from animals -- dead animals. So, don't have a cow, over butter, man.

Butter only uses stuff from living cows. Paint and paper, however, are made in part from meat by-products from dead animals in it. Many adhesives, as well.

So the industry that you targeted with your protest actually provided you with the technology to express yourself.

But that's not the only way you used meat by-products during your protest about the use of meat.

If you drove your car -- or even if you are an environmentalist who rode your bike to the State Fair -- meat by-products made that possible, as well. The ball bearings that make your wheels move are made with inedible meat by-products. The rubber in your tires, too, has ingredients from dead animals.

Face it, Dude: Some cow had to die so you could buy some paint, and go to the State Fair to put that protest on the Butter Cow.

You like to say that as a vegan, you don't use meat in any way.

Oh yes, you do. Every day. Lots of ways.

You may not "eat" meat, and there's nothing wrong with that, although the thought of using soy products to replace ice cream seems rather nasty, at least to me. I don't think that "iced dessert made from soybeans, not ice cream" is a very appealing marketing tool.

But according to both the meat producers, and Vegan web sites, just about everything you use every day has some sort of meat by-product in it.

Here are just a few: marshmallows, gelatin, plaster, asphalt, insulation, lubricants, lipstick, hand cream, fireworks, buttons, piano keys, glue, fertilizer (for all of those vegetables you grow to replace meat in your diet), paper, wallpaper, sandpaper, combs, toothbrushes, and even violin strings.

And I haven't even mentioned medical uses, especially insulin. It takes the insulin from the pancreases of 26 cattle to keep one diabetic alive for one year. So if you have any close friends or relatives who are diabetic, you may want to keep that whole "go vegan" thing to yourself.

Whoever you are, you made lots of news this week. People all over the world have heard about you.

And you've even inspired some poems for a future Iowa State Fair.

I never saw a Butter Cow

But I sure hope I see one

So I could make it better now

By making it a vegan

The State Fair's had its Butter Cow

For a hundred and three years

But until the year two-oh-one-three

No one ever shed one tear

Thousands saw the Butter Cow

Just standing there, all frozen

But me, you know, I found a way

For my views to be imposin'

It takes months to carve a butter cow

To form its shape and size

But in just a single minute I

Wrote some words for the wise

I hope you take my words to heart

As you see the butter cow

And the news of my words of art

Has Iowa all aflutter now

I bet at the Fair I made my mark

By how I schemed to barge in

In 2014 they will start

To carve cows out of margarine