From the linked article:
PETA is asking Major League Baseball to stop using the term bullpen to describe the area where pitchers warm up and instead use the term “arm barn.”
The nonprofit organization argued that saying “bullpen” is insensitive to cows in a news release on Thursday.....PETA argues that the MLB should “strike out the word bullpen in favor of a more modern, animal-friendly term.”
The term bullpen was not derived from the holding pens for bulls at slaughter houses. The term was put in use because of the prevalence of "Bull Durham Tobacco" signs in minor league ballparks back the early part of the last century. The signs were most often placed on the walls in areas where relief pitchers warmed up. Thus ball players and fans started to call the area where the relief pitchers were located the bullpen.
I shake my head in wonder. Insensitive to cows indeed.
