Ingrid Newkirk, chairwoman of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, denounced mass murderer John Wayne Gacy, who was scheduled to be executed the following week. Rather than comment on Gacy's murder of at least 33 people, she focused on the fried chicken Gacy had ordered for his last meal:

We understand things when they occur to us—we don't want to be killed, but then we require somebody else to lose their life for nothing more fleeting than a taste....

It's a cut and dried issue in the case of animals killed for the table—it's just a habit, and we don't need them and we don't have to take their lives. We don't have to cut their lives short, and so that's something that everybody should be able to agree on. The only reason people don't is because they have a taste for meat.

†