Category Archive: Food Scares

1. PETA Steps on Itself with Latest Anti-Chicken Attack

   April 8, 2016 3:55 pm Comments Off on PETA Steps on Itself with Latest Anti-Chicken Attack

   People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) is notorious for its use of sexually explicit themes to promote its vegan agenda. The self-described “press sluts” have conducted so many demonstrations in skimpy clothing over the past decades that such actions are hardly notable anymore. So, with the “lettuce ladies” losing their shock value (and the supply of billboards willing to show degrading images of women dwindling), where does the world’s most notorious animal rights group turn?

   The answer, Vice reports, is vulgar language and nonsensical assertions about the effects of eating chicken. PETA thinks that the below screenshot is a compelling argument to go vegan:

   

   The “science” behind the assertion is as juvenile as the language. Mic.com looked at the study PETA cited to back up the claim: It doesn’t even mention chicken or poultry. In promoting the claim, PETA is recycling old animal-liberation tripe: Michael Greger, chief schlock-doc at the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), peddled the same claim in a 2011 “Latest in Clinical Nutrition” veganism-promotion DVD. (HSUS, like PETA, is an animal liberation group; it is not affiliated with local pet shelters.)

   The argument is as feeble now as it was then. When PETA surfaced the chicken-causes-deficiency claim a couple of years ago, Dr. Joe Schwarcz of McGill University’s Office of Science and Society characterized the notion as “simply junk science” (since no research had actually, you know, researched any effect of maternal chicken consumption and male size). PETA doesn’t care about being correct: It cares about being crass.

2. Dr. Oz: Animal Rights Activist?

   April 28, 2011 12:00 am Comments Off on Dr. Oz: Animal Rights Activist?

   Daytime television’s self-promoting “YOU Doc” Dr. Mehmet Oz entertained us Wednesday with his assault on meat and dairy, offering up his talk show's couch to a vegan activist group that twists medical research to claim non-tofu proteins come with major health risks.

   In typical Oz fashion, he promised to tell his audience what they “need to avoid in order to avoid getting cancer and heart disease.” And who better to fill everybody in than Neal Barnard?

   Groan.

   Barnard, for the unfamiliar, is president of the PETA-linked “Physicians Committee” for Responsible Medicine (PCRM), which gets most of its funding from a single wealthy animal-rights activist in Florida. Barnard, who has called cheese “dairy crack” and tried to sue milk companies for causing “pain and suffering” to lactose intolerant Americans, predictably railed against non-PETA-approved diets.

   Oz promoted his guest’s agenda as “a different way of thinking about what you do in your day-to-day life.” Yes, we suppose that’s true. Barnard’s past claim that “to give a child animal products is a form of child abuse” is certainly, um… different. And Oz never told his audience that Barnard (a non-practicing psychiatrist) was once the president of the PETA Foundation—the organization that owns PETA’s office building and pays its salaries.

   Oz helpfully suggests, “Don’t call it a diet.” And he’s right. Barnard’s advice is animal-rights ideology on a plate.

   Eating nutrient-rich vegetables and fruits is a great idea, but so is eating nutrient-rich animal products. It’s difficult to swallow a stealthily masked, ideology-fueled prescription when it’s passed off as a cancer cure-all.

   Has the good doctor (Oz, not Barnard) been fooled or is he a willing accomplice?