Washington, DC – This week an animal rights group masquerading as a medical charity issued a report suggesting that airport meals including meat and dairy foods are “unhealthy.” Today the Center for Consumer Freedom called on the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) to stop misleading consumers and come clean about its animal-rights motives for attacking restaurants that don’t emphasize strictly vegetarian fare.
PCRM has well-documented ties to the animal rights movement, including over $1.3 million in financing from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA). PCRM president Neal Barnard, a non-practicing psychiatrist, doubles as President of The PETA Foundation. PCRM has attracted a growing number of anti-meat, pro-vegetarian nutrition zealots who are committed to removing beef, dairy, poultry, and other animal products from the American diet for good.
Further evidence of PCRM’s ties to the animal-rights movement is represented by Trulie Ankerberg-Nobis, who dispenses the “medical advice” of vegetarian-only meals in PCRM’s airport-food news release. Ankerberg-Nobis is herself a former PETA activist who has appeared in various states of undress in order to lend shock value to the group’s animal-rights protests.
In her February 2004 column, “Live Nude Girls: A Feminist Animal Rights Activist Tells Her Story,” Ankerberg-Nobis proudly discusses her titillating experience touring the Midwest with PETA:
“I also am a PETA supporter and have volunteered for many of their ‘eye-catching’ demos. I have dressed in a cow’s suit and a fur coat with a bag over my head. I have also worn a pleather ‘dominatrix’ outfit to educate about the cruelty in leather and protested the circus as a tiger in a cage wearing orange body paint, pasties, and underwear. Most recently, with PETA I helped distribute Tofurkys as a ‘sexy Santa’ in a mini skirt, crop top and high-heeled boots.”
“Most Americans are too smart to knowingly take dietary advice from PETA,” said David Martosko, the Center for Consumer Freedom’s Director of Research. “But when animal rights activists put on the sheep’s clothing of the medical profession, it becomes harder to know who’s credible. This so-called ‘physicians’ group has a huge hidden agenda. Force-feeding animal rights propaganda to busy holiday travelers is not ‘responsible’ conduct. If Ms. Ankerberg-Nobis showed up at an airport in one of her skimpy PETA outfits, she might breeze through security — but nobody would take her anti-meat claims seriously.”
