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.

• Our objections to the Center for Science in the Public Interest’s (CSPI) report attacking restaurants for their kids’ meal offerings received wide coverage. The Los Angeles Times and CNN.com both reported our criticism of CSPI’s “blame game,” as did numerous local NBC affiliates.
• The Daily Mail reports that People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals’ (PETA) campaign to propagandize children may have recently crossed another line, as if trying to cram its animal liberation ideology into school curriculums, to “traumatize” children with graphic displays, and featuring convicted arsonists in its former kids’ magazine weren’t enough. When a 14 year-old Louisiana boy offered a cow in a raffle to go on a school trip to Ireland and the United Kingdom, PETA responded by sending the kid images of the group’s “lettuce ladies” that the boy’s father characterized as “wildly inappropriate.” Supporters of PETA’s animal liberation agenda went further and reportedly bullied the kid online, including sending hopes that the raffle winner would choke to death. You can read our report on PETA’s child-propaganda campaign from a few years back for more information on how PETA tries to manipulate impressionable kids.
• Are people beginning to realize that the “public health” community—which we have criticized for its habit of expanding its control from public concerns beyond citizens’ individual responsibility to private habits that are individuals’ choices—has the wrong model for dealing with obesity? A recent article in Breakthrough that received favorable coverage at The Week and The Daily Beast suggests that the commentariat is beginning to ask serious questions of the CSPI/Kelly Brownell/Michael Bloomberg blame-food-first axis. The author proposes that by drawing the wrong lessons from past crusades and blaming food corporations alone for obesity, the anti-obesity movement doomed itself for failure. Read the whole thing.
• CCF in the News: After a Daily Mail report on PETA’s animal-killing hypocrisy, we appeared on the Mark Levin radio show to warn the conservative dog-lover’s listeners that the animal liberation group kills nearly 90 percent of the dogs and cats in its care. The truth about PETA was also reported on PETA’s hometown NBC affiliate and at Yahoo! News.

The article even claims that the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics and the American Association of Pediatrics endorse veganism for kids. They don’t — they actually say a vegan diet can work if properly planned — and they refrain from endorsing it for very good reason. Without Vitamin B12, found almost exclusively in foods of animal origin, kids can suffer severe nutrient deficiencies. In some cases, nutrient deficiencies in vegan-raised kids were reportedly fatal.

The article’s errors go on. The reporter attempts to cite polling by the Vegetarian Resource Group (VRG) — an advocacy organization for vegetarian eating — as evidence that more kids are turning vegan. However, the article doesn’t get the numbers right. While the paper states that 3 percent of kids in a 2010 survey were vegan, VRG’s website states the actual number was 2 percent. Additionally, the paper claimed that in a 2012 survey, VRG found that 5 percent of U.S. adults were vegan. Not true: VRG’s website says the true value was 1 percent.

And, in a lesson from 4^th grade geometry, you have no evidence of a trend in kids without two data points. So the claim of “growing popularity” is simply asserted without evidence — the lame attempt at justifying it is quoting a VRG spokesman who says he “suspects” there’s a higher number of vegan kids.

Putting aside the errors, let’s remember that we’re still talking about 1 or 2 percent of the population being vegan. Whoop-tee-doo.  We see stories all the time about celebs who “went veg” giving it up and going back into the meaty fold. (In recent weeks, Ozzy Osbourne and R&B singer Ne-Yo have rejoined the 99 percent after a vegan experiment.) Maybe the real question should be, after all the years of propaganda from PETA, the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), and other vegan animal liberation activists, has the public concluded that it just doesn’t agree?

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.

Surprised? HSUS is a vegan activist organization that doesn’t run a single pet shelter, not your local humane society. It does, however, employ PETA alumni, including the brains behind the disgusting “Holocaust on Your Plate” campaign and a lettuce lady face of “Lobster Liberation.” That’s why we started Humane Watch — a project to get out the facts about HSUS’s radical anti-animal agriculture agenda, awful charity ratings from respected watchdogs, and deceptive advertising.

And many of those finger-snacking football fans might be falling for HSUS’s deception. Recent public polling shows that over 70 percent of Americans mistakenly believe that HSUS is a pet shelter umbrella group — in reality, HSUS gives less than one percent of its budget to local pet shelters. So to help them make informed donation decisions, we will air an ad during the football celebrations warning viewers of HSUS’s deception.

If you happen to see it on Sunday night, feel free to go to our Facebook page and share the clip to tell your friends the facts about HSUS’s deceptive fundraising, vegan agenda, and oft-criticized management practices.

• British newspaper The Guardian brings us a gem of unintended consequences from the so-called “sustainable” food movement (that wins a striking lack of converts). Vegans and vegetarians looking for meat substitutes have turned to a South American grain, quinoa, and that decision has made life difficult in Bolivia, where quinoa is a staple. The increased interest in quinoa from “ethically conscious” Western one-percenters has apparently caused ruinous food inflation. Some ethical consciousness. Next thing you know, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) will be killing animals. Oh, wait.
• The New York Times’s resident herald of the limp “food movement” (and sometimes very amateur epidemiologist) Mark Bittman is not happy with Coca-Cola’s advertising addressing obesity. You see, Bittman knows that Coke “makes its money selling sugar-sweetened beverages” and is “still selling them.” Of course, Bittman’s most famous book, How to Cook Everything — no stranger to high-calorie meals, including a hamburger more loaded than a Big Mac — is still for sale. So, Mr. Bittman, before criticizing soft drink companies, shouldn’t you renounce cheese and all its works (since your epidemiology-by-Internet-commenter says that it’s evil) by taking that book off the market and offering full refunds to anybody who bought it?
• Our Senior Research Analyst is telling Alabamans and Coloradans that they should make a New Year’s Resolution to use personal responsibility, rather than government regulation, if they want to lose weight. He writes, “Food activists seem to think that a little tax here, a warning label there, and a few banned appetizers will make us resemble swimsuit models by summer. But the research demonstrates that diet ‘nudges’ can have the exact opposite effect.”
• CCF in the News: Our Executive Director is calling out the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) for getting itself embroiled in an alleged racket with donors’ doggie dollars in the New York Post and Washington Examiner. Our Senior Research Analyst is criticizing the self-commissioned food police Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) for attacking “life’s simpler pleasures” for Baltimore and Los Angeles readers and PETA in its hometown for killing over 90 percent of the pets in its care. He also sat down with Reason TV to discuss a Washington, D.C. suburb’s misguided proposal to use the zoning code to reduce food choices.
• CCF This Week: In our daily posts this week, we’ve taken PETA to task for posing as a shelter pet advocate while killing pets left and right, objected to CSPI attacking restaurant dishes while ignoring that restaurants offer healthy options, used Coca-Cola’s new ad campaign as a teachable moment for activist goalpost-moving, and looked into the election returns to find that food freedom is a bipartisan desire.

Although he didn’t waste any ink hawking dioxin screening tests (for a small fee), PCRM board member T. Colin Campbell unsurprisingly takes the side of “Yes: Cut Animal Based Protein.” When you read Campbell’s screed, you might feel déjà vu. Don’t worry—you have heard all of this before. Much like his fellow activists at PCRM, Campbell rehashes the same old arguments, many of which come from his book, The China Study, published back in 2004, the most ridiculous being that animal protein causes cancer.

On the other side is Dr. Nancy Rodriguez, a professor of nutritional sciences at University of Connecticut, Storrs. She advocates a balanced diet and lifestyle. And she also makes it clear that Campbell’s points, particularly on animal protein causing cancer, aren’t credible:

Proponents of a vegan diet paint a grim picture of the effects of animal protein on human health. But the effects of powdered, isolated casein on rats tells us very little about what traditionally consumed forms of milk will do to humans. And it tells us nothing that can be generalized to all “animal nutrients.” …

It is simply untrue to suggest that animal protein causes cancer. The American Cancer Society, along with other leading health organizations, emphasizes that the effects of foods and nutrients need to be considered in the context of the total diet. Research from many sources shows that other factors, such as not smoking, responsible alcohol consumption, maintaining a healthy weight and regular physical activity, are much more important to reducing cancer risk than eating or avoiding any individual food.

She also puts PCRM’s junk science about dairy to shame.

Finally, contrary to my opponent’s assertions, dairy’s role in strengthening bones has long been established by the nutrition and science community. Don’t take just the Dietary Guidelines’ word. Dozens of randomized, controlled, clinical trials—the gold standard in research—have demonstrated that calcium and dairy products contribute to stronger bones. These trials far outweigh any observational studies which, by their very design, cannot show a causal relationship between eliminating meat and dairy foods and a subsequent improvement in health.

When you start with an animal rights agenda and try to find the science to back it up, you’re bound to find only the studies that support your position. PCRM’s “research” against meat and dairy can hardly stand on their own, let alone against a credible expert.

While it’s no surprise to see Mark Bittman of the New York Times pushing an artificially concocted “great milk debate of 2012” in his columns, we’ll have to make sure USA Today gets the memo in the future. An article in the paper leads with Bittman’s anecdotal faux-research — supported by America’s fountain of wisdom, internet commenters — and calls in PCRM to recycle the same old arguments against milk.

PCRM gets easy treatment from the author: It is billed as “a non-profit that describes itself as promoting preventive medicine and advocates a vegetarian diet.” We think the note on PCRM’s vegan agenda is a bit understated — we’d prefer “a PETA-like non-profit that suggests that animal rights activism is tantamount to science.”

PCRM’s screed about milk marketing and Bittman’s random anecdotes are no match for actual science:

While there are drawbacks for some [lactose intolerance], the nutritional benefits of milk are clear, says Ruth Frechman, a registered dietitian and spokesperson for the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, formerly the American Dietetic Association. “Milk is a nutrient-dense beverage; it’s relatively inexpensive and is an easy source of hydration,” she says. It contains protein, calcium, vitamin D, phosphorus, potassium, vitamin B12 and other vitamins and minerals.

…

Robert Post, deputy director of the USDA’s Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion, says of the four nutrients that are of public health concern because Americans don’t get enough of them — calcium, potassium, vitamin D and fiber– three are in dairy foods. 

Animal rights talking points aren’t the same as actual research. PCRM likes to take disparate facts to form an hyperbolic thesis to push its vegan agenda. The equation this year goes something like this:

Mark Bittman doesn’t like milk (ignore that he loves cheese) + Some people are lactose intolerant + dairy farmers promote their products = milk is basically poison

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.

You now have some idea of the task facing cheese processors trying to reduce the levels of sodium and fat in cheeses. Salt and milk fats are basic components of cheese, just as sugar is to fruit and fat is to oil. One South Dakota State University dairy scientist told The New York Times: “If you really want to make bad cheese, make a low-fat, low-sodium one.”

That said, food companies are working on lower-fat, lower-sodium cheeses in the hopes of finding replacement options for people who want both cheese and reduced fat and sodium in their diets. Processors hope that by using replacement ingredients—like artificial sweeteners that replace sugars in diet soda —or by changing production methods — like the decaffeination process that yields decaf coffee — they can find ways to create these options for consumers. Cheese makers haven’t quite succeeded yet, but given time, they might find something.

This might appall Michael Pollan and other activists who hate modern food advances, but technology offers a much less onerous path to healthier food (to say nothing of food safety) than a heavy book of dubious “food rules.” And should the technologists succeed and make tasty but better-for-you cheese, their success will also presumably draw criticism from activists like David Kessler and Kelly “Twinkie Tax” Brownell who think the only way to stop Americans from becoming “addicted” to food is to make it taste worse.

Of course, cheese isn’t crack (sorry, ex-PETA Foundation President Neal Barnard), and there’s nothing wrong with trying to make it healthier while still tasty. But that didn’t stop activists from “sliming” lean ground beef, so cheese technologists should be sure to be on guard.