Category Archive: Dairy

  1. PETA Distorts Autism Science

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    PKA syringe picWe know that People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) and its activist allies like to invent reasons to avoid milk. But now the animal liberation radicals are pulling from the dangerous anti-vaccine playbook, claiming that moo-juice causes autism. An infectious disease specialist writing at the Daily Beast calls PETA out for its misleading myth-making. He argues:

    But by sticking their nose into the issue, PETA has only served to marginalize serious researchers who might uncover useful information and place the topic into the hands of charlatans and faith healers, those who use family desperation as an opportunity to turn a buck.

    At Science-Based Medicinea medical doctor comes to a similar conclusion:

    This is clearly, in my opinion, a campaign of fear mongering based upon a gross distortion of the scientific evidence. The purpose is to advocate for a vegan diet, which fits their ideological agenda. They are likely aware that it is easier to spread fears than to reassure with a careful analysis of the scientific evidence.

    It’s not surprising that PETA would embellish and distort anti-dairy claims to promote its animal liberation agenda, just appalling. It is also appalling that PETA kills over 80 percent of the dogs and cats in its care and has killed over 31,000 pets since 1998Is there any low to which PETA will not stoop? _______________________________________________________

    Check out our new site that calls out PETA for killing so many pets even as it campaigns to ban all uses of animals by people. Even caring for pets is against PETA’s principles: PETA President Ingrid Newkirk has said, “It would be lovely if we stopped this whole notion of pets altogether.”

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    We will continue to expose PETA for its hypocrisy and extremism. Head over to Petakillsanimals.com to see the full, graphic truth—if you can stomach it.

  2. Pet Killers Can’t Even Name Their Own Meatless Kind Correctly

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    PKA syringe picPeople for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) — last seen killing nearly 90 percent of the dogs and cats in its care last year — likes to trot out celebrities who have supposedly given up meat, dairy, and eggs and “gone veg” to make the inaccurate claim that all the “cool kids” are PETA types. But one of PETA’s latest attempts to prove the impossible has put soy-egg substitute on the notorious organization’s face: PETA named Dax Shepard its “Sexiest Vegetarian Celebrity,” but he’s a meat-eater.

    Like one-time vegan NFL footballer Arian Foster, he confessed to eating poultry. We’d like to welcome Shepard back into the 98 percent of us who aren’t vegan, though ultimately what he eats is his business, not ours or PETA’s.

    Mischaracterizing Shepard’s dinner menu  isn’t PETA’s worst error — that dishonor must go to either PETA’s aforementioned pet shelter of horrors, its giving a sizable grant to an arsonist, or the group’s shameless propagandizing of children — but it does suggest an interesting question: With all the chattering classes’ talk of people “going veg,” do people actually stick to a vegan or vegetarian diet?

    We recently tasked Opinion Research Corporation (CNN’s pollster) to find out. The company surveyed a nationally representative sample of 1,000 Americans to determine how many tried and failed to follow the PETA diet. Only six percent bothered to try veganism. An additional 18 percent gave up meat while holding onto dairy and eggs.

    So, are these folks all still faithful to the PETA ethic? The sizable majority isn’t. Our findings discovered that 82 percent of those who tried to give up meat (both vegetarians and vegans) eventually gave in to its flavorful temptations. Perhaps bacon, the “gateway meat,” played a role.

    Indeed, a majority of trialists didn’t make it a year, with 36 percent caving within one month. Of our sample, only 3½ percent were still vegetarian or vegan. (This is in line with polling conducted by vegetarianism advocacy groups, which has shown vegetarians to comprise less than 5 percent of the U.S. population.)

    Ultimately, puff pieces purporting to prove that pork, poultry, and porterhouse are leaving the American table lack support. While PETA, its animal liberationist comrades at Humane Society of the United States, and foodies like the New York Times’ Mark Bittman proclaim the vegan hour is nigh, in reality their message isn’t breaking through.

  3. Are We All Vegans Now?

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    Fried FoodClaiming that vegetarianism is just about to break through, this time is a classic animal liberationist tactic to peer-pressure omnivores into giving up their milk, bacon, and eggs. We covered a story last week that said all the cool pre-tweens were going veggie—a report that was full of more holes than Swiss cheese. Now the Voice of America claims that the nation’s meat tooth is dying and all the cool newspapermen are “going veg.” (Should they fall off the wagon like Ozzy Osbourne or treat themselves to the occasional meaty snack like NFLer Arian Foster, there doesn’t seem to be the same media swarm as an “I’m vegan now!” declaration.)

    But the animal liberationists at People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) shouldn’t put down the puppy-killing needles to celebrate the “vegan nation” yet. Economic stresses, namely the ongoing long stagnation and the drought that killed much of the nation’s feed-stock, are responsible for much of the decline in meat consumption. If those pressures lift, expect Americans to resume normal, meaty dinner service.

    It’s clear that even if we’re eating a little less meat, Americans aren’t falling in line with Humane Society of the United States Food Policy Director and ex-PETA flack Matt Prescott’s repulsive view farmers are running concentration camps. Meat is more expensive and consumers have less money, so they’re scrimping and saving. At the same time, cheese consumption is nearing record highs. Certainly, if people want to be vegetarian it’s their free choice, but it doesn’t look like the PETA/HSUS lifestyle is calling the masses to the vegan sliver of society.

  4. PETA’s Death Toll Nears 30,000 Pets

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    PETA Kills AnimalsSince at least 1998, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) has operated a pet “shelter” — more than the misnamed Humane Society of the United States can claimUnfortunately the dogs and cats that are taken into PETA’s shelter are usually killed. And those that were sheltered in 2012 are no exception: According to Virginia state regulatory filings, PETA — the group that preaches “total animal liberation” and that would ban bacon, butter, and Beyonce’s Big Game halftime show — killed 89.4 percent of the dogs and cats it took into its shelter.

    The 1,647 cats and dogs PETA employees killed last year bring the animal rights group’s total body count to 29,398 since 1998. PETA has committed this slaughter despite the fact that the group’s president, Ingrid Newkirk, has claimed that “We could become a no-kill shelter immediately.” The self-described “press sluts” are more interested in lettuce-clad “lobster liberation” and offending Holocaust survivors than finding adoptive homes for the pets in its care. PETA even bought a walk-in freezer to store the bodies. That’s probably not the “forever home” most people would hope for.

    What makes it scarier for pet owners is that this highest of hypocrisies isn’t completely out of character for PETA. Newkirk has said that in her ideal world, “companion animals [what the rest of us call “pets”] would be phased out.” A PETA staffer wrote in a Florida newspaper that the community should become “no-birth,” putting puppies and kittens on the path of the dodo bird. And — perhaps desperate not to be shamed by the performance of city dog catchers — PETA stood in the way of an ordinance to reduce pet killing in its hometown.

    If you are outraged by PETA’s shameful, lethal behavior, please go to PETAKillsAnimals.com and sign our petition asking the Commonwealth of Virginia to strip the group of its status as an animal shelter.

  5. PETA Meets Two Judges, Loses Two Cases

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    One of the goals of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) is to grant animals the same legal rights as people, but this foolish quest suffered double setbacks this week. PETA is no stranger to losing in the courtroom—like its frivolous case claiming that Sea World’s performing whales were slaves or a not-at-all-frivolous case involving a breach of confidentiality that a jury found cost a police officer his job—but it added two new defeats to its list, one in California and one in Kansas.

    In California, a judge ruled against PETA’s lawsuit attacking California’s “Happy Cows Come from California” dairy marketing campaign. The judge found that “experience and knowledge substantiate that dairy farmers … adhere to some of the highest animal welfare standards in the U.S.” PETA’s record on animal welfare is killing over 90 percent of the pets in the group’s care in each of the past six years, so it’s understandable that the group might not recognize high welfare standards. (After all, animal welfare, a science, is not at all like animal rights ideology.)

    In a U.S. District Court in Kansas, a judge found that PETA cannot force Kansas State Fair organizers to let the group publicly display a profane and graphic anti-meat propaganda video. PETA won’t be denied a booth, but people who want to see the video will have to seek it out. Even so, an anti-agriculture group will still have more access to an agriculture fair than any pro-agriculture group would probably have at an animal rights event.

    PETA’s “press sluts” tactics might get it in the news, but thus far the group has little to show for it. And now courts are joining pop idols like Lady Gaga in telling PETA to get lost.

  6. PETA Milks Same Old Spoiled Propaganda

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    You’ve already heard of the the “latte loophole” exempting drinks with 50 percent dairy or soy milk from the proposed New York City soda regulation limiting the size of soft drinks to 16 ounces. Unsurprisingly, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) would like to limit it to a “soy latte loophole.” PETA has called on a celebrity supporter—who is, shockingly, fully clothed—to rehash their arguments bashing milk, hoping that the New York City health department will add it to the banned list.

    Russell Simmons, a record producer and PETA backer, sent this in his letter to the City:

    [R]eplacing soda with cow’s milk […] provided no weight-loss benefit–none. In light of this information, my friends at PETA and I urge you to include cow’s milk and other dairy-based drinks in your proposed beverage regulations.

    Unfortunately for the animal rights activists, there’s evidence that dairy consumption, far from making people fat, may even protect against obesity. A recent study in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association found that “Increasing fruits, vegetables, and low-fat dairy may help achieve weight loss and maintenance.” Indeed, if there’s any similarity between the effects of soda with dairy milk on obesity, it’s because neither makes a person fat when consumed in moderation.

    If this sounds like a tired and re-hashed animal-rights ploy, it’s probably because it is. Less than two years ago, PETA’s fellow travelers at the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) put out a statement calling milk “junk food.”

    We’ve seen worse. PCRM tried to get lactose intolerance warnings on all milk sold in Washington, D.C, and PCRM boss Neal Barnard called cheese “dairy crack […] the purest form of the [milk] drug.” And PETA’s and PCRM’s admonishments that milk causes bone loss have been thoroughly debunked.

    New Yorkers who choose to drink large dairy-based drinks should rest easy and ignore PETA and Simmons, for the “latte loophole” lives (for now, at least). But it would be wise for them to join the chorus against their government to give their soda-preferring fellow citizens that same freedom of choice.

  7. Ex-PETA VP: Omnivores are Like Racists or Something

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    You might remember that People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (the ones they don’t kill, anyway) recently sued Sea World, claiming that the park’s famous performing whales were actually slaves. The Daily Show’s Wyatt Cenac made fun of PETA at the time for suggesting that animals were the moral equals of humans forced to toil against their will. However ridiculous the view that giving people greater moral standing than “sea kittens” is a sin akin to racism might be, it’s a key philosophical underpinning of the animal rights movement.

    In fact, there’s even a term for it: “speciesism.”

    Bruce Friedrich, a former PETA Vice President who now holds a senior position with Farm Sanctuary, promoted a film examining this so-called “speciesism” at the Huffington Post this week. He’s not an outlier in his view among animal rights activists: PETA’s Ingrid Newkirk has claimed “a rat is a pig is a dog is a boy,” and the head of the Humane Society of the United States (which gives just one percent of its budget to local pet shelters) told an animal rights philosopher that he became vegan after he realized he was being a “speciesist.”

    In the real world, the view that “speciesism” is some equivalent to racism or sexism is recognized as bunk. One biologist notes that it is impossible not to put humans before at least some animals:

    The vegan militia have forgotten that to get their cruelty free vegetables, the land has already been cleared, all competing species have been killed or driven out, those that remain are poisoned (even by organic farmers – they just use “certified organic” methods of pest control or even other animals like ladybugs). We put humans first every time we clear a field, dig a foundation, fence and spray our crops, and burn diesel to harvest and bring them to market.

    This isn’t the first time a scientist has noted that human survival depends necessarily on at least some animal death: One Oregon State University scientist even proposed that if the goal of a food system were to kill the fewest animals, omnivore eating might even be necessary. All those bunnies, voles, and insects you kick out of cropland, even with “organic” pesticides, add up. One Australian expert even thinks eating vegetarian might be “the worst possible thing you can do” if your goal is a “cruelty-free” diet. Hopefully that’ll be some food for thought next time Bruce Friedrich hits the salad bar.