Meat (page40)

Virginian-Pilot columnist B.J. Atkinson, who has written at least one syndicated article on PETA's behalf ("Former cattle rancher says Dump Meat," Knight Ridder, 9/8/98), does her best to promote the Farm Animal Reform Movement's "Great American Meatout," a.k.a. Meatout 2000. This nanny posing as a journalist isn't content to plug vegetarianism at the expense of the meat eating; she goes after milk, too. ("Annual 'Meatout' can be springboard for vegetarian diet," The Virginian-Pilot, 3/15/00.)

Even journalists in the heart of dairy country are promoting the soy myth. The Madison Wisconsin’s Capital Times says, “If women seek to ease symptoms of menopause without using hormones…

Knight-Ridder News Service gives Murry J. Cohen of militant animal-rights group Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine a free ride in a syndicated editorial. In effort to scare to public with baseless claims about meat and dairy products, Cohen writes: "As we fret over the possibility of a modern plague, we live a self-fulfilling prophecy by continuing to eat meat and other animal products." ("Eating responsibly in the age of the epidemic," Knight-Ridder, 3/1/00.)

Nannies in the federal government want to put labels on eggs telling you not to cook them over easy because of potential salmonella contamination. With an average of five deaths a year over the last 13 years from salmonella (none tied to bad eggs), the Plain Dealer correctly asks, "Is this worth a warning label on egg cartons and a government-sponsored scare campaign? That's not the sort of thing a taxpayer ought to get over easy."

According to the Albany Times Union, the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) and other like-minded nannies are "waging the equivalent of a culinary Holy War against the use of dairy and meat products" in school lunchrooms. "They [PCRM] have this agenda that no one should eat animal products and they are not even doctors," says a Dairy Council spokesperson, correctly noting that a majority of the animal rights group's members are not doctors. ("Students target of a food fight," Albany Times Union, 2/22/00.)

With help from the anti-industrial agriculture movement, professor Steven Wing has produced a highly questionable study claiming that industrial hog farms reduce the quality of life for people living near them and tend to affect their health. Following standard operating procedure for nannies, Wing offers no medical evidence to back his conclusions.

One of the latest rages among vegetarians is to force their dogs to go vegetarian too. Vegetarians claim an all-plant diet will transform Fido from fat to fit. However, Dr. Andy Turkell of the American Animal Hospital Association says, "The obesity issue has nothing to do with too much meat… A dog's closest relative in the wild is the wolf. Wolves kill plant eaters like rabbits and eat their intestinal contents, which contain carbohydrates. You have to respect your dog's ancestry and anatomy."

The power of the internet to perpetuate urban legends is being felt by KFC. A recent e-mail claims that Kentucky Fried Chicken had started calling itself KFC because it no longer uses real chickens. Instead, the e-mail claims KFC uses genetically altered organisms that are kept alive by tubes that "have no beaks, no feathers, and no feet." The University of New Hampshire, mentioned as having done a study on the KFC "chickens" in the e-mail, set up a web page to handle the hoax which is getting about 15 to 18 hits per minute per day.

In response to calls from the White House, FDA, and Congress for warning labels on raw eggs, the Los Angeles Times speaks to various scientific experts who firmly disagree with critics that malign the safety of eggs. One former FDA chief counsel calls the mathematical model that produces food poisoning statistics "the closest thing I can think of in this modern age to a Ouija board. …The statistics are all over the place because none of them are any good. They are all wild guesses."