Rejecting PETA

It’s been a rough couple of months for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.

First reality TV star Kloe Kardashian called the group bullies for pelting sister Kim with flour. Then Jennifer Lawrence, star of the hit movie The Hunger Games, dissed the group in a Rolling Stone cover story. 

And now one of PETA’s outlandish billboard ads has been rejected on the grounds that it wasn’t truthful. According to a story in the Fresno Bee, the ad, stating that “Real Milk Comes from Really Sick Cows,” was to appear in Hanford, California, near where a dairy cow with Mad Cow disease was found last month.

Hal Kilshaw, vice president of government relations for Lamar Advertising, was quoted saying the PETA billboard was misleading. “Millions of people drink milk every day and don’t get sick,” Kilshaw said.

As a fallback, PETA put an ad promoting vegetarianism on a local television station.

Needed: Better Staff Work!

The folks advising the advocacy group Moms for Antibiotic Awareness need a refresher course in, well, antibiotic awareness.

The Website for the group, which lists a Pew foundation staffer as a contact, repeats the urban myth that 80 percent of antibiotics sold in this country are given to food animals often to promote growth and to compensate for “unsanitary and overcrowded conditions” on livestock farms.

Then it quotes the Food and Drug Administration and other federal agencies saying there is a “definitive link” between antibiotic use on livestock farms and antibiotic resistance in humans.

Never mind that the best science suggests the risk of human antibiotic resistance problems developing from farm use of antibiotics is negligible. Or that antibiotics are needed to keep animals healthy and food safe. Or that, before it approves animal drugs, the FDA must determine that they won’t harm human health. Or that confinement systems keep livestock comfortable and protect them from disease and predators. And, of course, there is no reference to the recent Kansas State study finding that opponents of animal antibiotics wildly overestimate the drugs given to livestock.  

HOTH appreciates the concern of the moms, who spent two days in Washington this week advocating for stricter guidelines for antibiotic use on farms. But maybe someone needs to tell them the new guidance the FDA already has issued will harm animal health and increase food costs while not improving public health.

'Rural Romanticism'

HOTH doesn’t always agree with Doug Powell, the Kansas State food scientist who churns out a variety of food safety information daily through blogs and listservs. But an essay Powell highlighted from Canadian food-safety lawyer Ronald L. Doering is too good to pass up. Titled “Rural Romanticism and ‘Natural’ Foods,” it appeared originally in Food in Canada magazine. A few samples:

“With the growing recognition that organic food is not any safer, tastier, more nutritious or more sustainable, in spite of the higher price, consumers now want foods that are produced the old fashioned way on the small family farm … Not surprisingly, food companies are turning themselves inside out to try to meet this demand. So we see ads with handsome farm families beside their green fields, no doubt providing natural, no-additive, chemical-free, home-style, no-preservative, artisanal ‘real’ food.

“I grew up on a farm and it bears little relationship to the bucolic scenes I see in these ads. Farming has always been, and still is, messy, bloody, dirty and very hard work. Why should farmers eschew modern methods to lessen their physical labour and be more efficient just so they meet some urbanite’s notion of what farming should be like? In what other sector of our economy do we encourage the greater use of yesterday’s technology?

“There is much talk these days that consumers are now more knowledgeable and care more about where their food comes from. In my experience, urban Canadians know almost nothing about where their food comes from … That’s because there is so much misinformation provided by alternative medicine and natural health websites, and by ‘wellness’ magazines that flood into this country every day, all unregulated. They read books written by urban foodies that have never set foot on a farm and who are shocked to learn when they do that most organic food now comes from large ‘industrial’ farms owned by multinationals, the very entities they despise.”

California Dreamin’

Look for a major battle in California this fall over a requirement to label foods containing genetically engineered products.

State backers of a GMO labeling initiative say they have turned in nearly double the number of signatures needed to qualify for the November ballot.

But major food companies and seed manufacturers are likely to fight hard in opposition to the initiative, which would not cover animals injected with growth hormones or fed genetically engineered feed.

The California Right to Know Campaign held rallies in major cities across the state Wednesday to mark the submission of 970,000 signatures to state election officials. They say only 555,000 signatures were needed to qualify for the ballot.

The idea of GMO labeling has picked up steam recently and, understandably, supporters see California as a favorable environment for a ballot initiative.

HOTH notes that Americans have been eating GMO foods for two decades with no apparent ill effects.

Ouch!

First the Humane Society of the United States earned another D grade from Charity Watch for spending too little of its money on programs and too much on things such as fundraising and executive salaries. And now the anti-HSUS Center for Consumer Freedom is out with a scathing parody of an animal cruelty video, playing off that D grade.

The two-minute YouTube video depicts sad-eyed, out-of-work lawyers and lobbyists behind a chain link fence as doleful music plays in the background. A moderator sorrowfully says you can help put these unfortunate victims back to work for just $19 a month by joining HSUS “in our fight to hire more lawyers.”

The female moderator adds that it’s a misconception that HSUS operates pet shelters: “We don’t run a single one,” she tells the audience. “Our real goal is to get the government to eliminate farms with animals. We’re basically PETA with suits and deodorant.”

All HOTH can say is … ouch!

Simply Wrong

Ezra Klein, the increasingly visible Washington Post policy blogger, should stick to what he thinks he knows, which is economics. When he wanders off into agriculture policy, as he did Thursday in commenting on antibiotic use in livestock, he is worse than uninformed. He’s simply wrong.

For starters Klein cites as fact the urban myth that 70 percent of the country’s antibiotics are used in livestock production. He calls it one of his “favorite scary statistics.” The livestock industry has always recognized this as a wild overestimate, and a recent study out of Kansas State University confirms that. In fact, it blows Klein’s “scary statistic” out of the water.

Next, Klein cites “mounting evidence” that farm use of antibiotics “is contributing to the startling rise in antibiotic-resistant bacteria” in humans. In fact, numerous peer-reviewed risk assessments, including at least one by the Food and Drug Administration, show “negligible” risk to human health from antibiotic use in livestock. Totally missing from Klein’s missive is any recognition that antibiotic resistance develops from many factors and that a major contributor is over-prescription of antibiotics in humans.

Finally, Klein repeats the canard that vast amounts of antibiotics are needed to keep livestock healthy because they are raised in unhealthy conditions. In fact, modern livestock confinement systems are designed to keep animals healthy. Animals are kept in scientifically designed, biosecure barns to protect them from predators, disease, and bad weather.

Most livestock antibiotics are used when animals are sick or susceptible to illness. That’s as it should be. Healthy animals produce safe food, and we need every available tool to avoid putting the food supply at risk.

Perhaps even Klein could agree with that last point.

Seeing The Light On PETA

The celebrity-friendly image of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals is getting a little tarnished. 

First reality TV star Kloe Kardashian, who had previously done ads for the animal rights group, called PETA “bullies” for pelting fur-wearing sister Kim with flour at a Hollywood event. And now Jennifer Lawrence, star of the hit movie The Hunger Games, has dissed PETA in a Rolling Stone cover story. 

In an interview in the magazine’s latest issue, Lawrence reveals that a graphic scene from an earlier movie, in which she gutted a squirrel and ripped off its fur, was not an illusion. “I should say it wasn’t real, for PETA,” Lawrence reportedly said. “But screw PETA.”

The anti-PETA Center for Consumer Freedom reacted by saying it would welcome any celebrities who “see the light on this noxious activist group.”