Because the best way to garner support for your cause is to torture animals.

According to The Ottawa Citizen, seven piglets were abandoned outside Premier Dalton McGuinty's constituency office in Ottawa. There were posters at the scene complaining about McGuinty's government's handling of the swine flu (H1N1) pandemic. The argument is that the use of the term 'swine flu' has beaten the hell out of pork sales, thus making it impossible for farmers to feed their livestock or their children. As a result, they have started to put down pigs (no word yet on whether or not they'll be putting down their children).

The Humane Society is not pleased, nor should any of us be pleased. I understand the need for shock value and attention-grabbing stunts, but I'm not sure abandoning pigs in the hot sun in suburban Ottawa is really the way to go.

If the stunt were not so cruel, the incoherence would be quite funny. In what way can the naming of the swine flu be attributed to Dalton McGuinty? Further, I haven't heard anyone in the media refer to 'swine flu' in months. Everyone seems to have switched over to the much more clinical sounding 'H1N1'.

So, their protest against the name 'swine flu' seems to have achieved three things:

• Painting themselves as perpetrators of animal cruelty;
• Showing themselves to have not fully thought through the issue; and,
• Bringing the term 'swine flu' back into the news.

Bravo.