Yelp, Stop Supporting Exploitation

On August 29, 2015, the town of Asheville, NC is hosting a festival of exploitation hailed as "BaconFest." I'm not sure exactly what baconfest entails beyond a lot of people getting eating the remains of severely-exploited pigs. I don't understand why Yelp feels this is a good thing to support, and I have no problem never using your site again.

Pigs who are killed for food (like any animal) suffer horrendously. No words in the English language can even describe how it feels to be confined in a crate so small that you cannot turn around; imagine living your life on a concrete floor without windows, fresh air, or room to exercise. Rape with metal objects, the kicking of baby pigs, pulling out of teeth and tail docking (without anesthesia, of course), are routine in major factory farms and slaughterhouses. "Free range" pigs have it little better - perhaps their lives are a little less stressful, but they end like all pigs' lives who are meant for "meat" on someone's plate - oftentimes beaten with metal rods as they are pushed into the slaughterhouse; footage shows many times pig attempting to retreat to save their own lives; strung up, struggling, by the legs, their throats slit while they are still conscious. Some pigs are boiled alive, since immersing their bodies in boiling water to remove the bristly hair is common practice. Again, neither you nor I can fully imagine or understand the barbarity of these incidents, but I believe that intellectually many compassionate and/or justice-minded persons have a good enough imagination to understand that these practices are absolutely, appallingly brutal and absolutely unnecessary. If you are at all unsure about this, watch Earthlings beginning at 26 minutes in and watch pigs struggling to save themselves against all odds.

There is no reason a company like Yelp should support this kind of festival of barbarity. If it is too late for you to pull out now, we urge you to promise never to support another festival celebrating the suffering of anyone, including nonhuman animlas.