PETA Fauxpas

Fox News reported another of PETA’s tactless public attacks on anybody who chows down on anything but a vegan meal. If that term seems foreign, a vegan is someone who will not eat any flesh or byproducts of animals. That includes eggs, milk products, honey, animal fat, or gelatin.

The ad campaign features … well, here’s a picture of the billboard they hope to erect on or near Florida’s Anna Marie Island, where a young man nearly lost his leg to a shark while diving.

Among the gems of disinformation PETA has published are such statements as, “Americans kill twelve billion fish annually for food.” Truth is, although we may consume twelve billion fish annually (a statistic of dubious authority), Japan and a few other nations are also in on the crime of harvesting and packaging those poor, misunderstood critters. And that begs another question: What is PETA to do about the vast, unstemmed cruelty that fish perpetrate against one another. Fish consumption by humans pales in comparison.

Observe the great white shark pictured on the proposed billboard. How does a shark feasting on a human constitute payback for humans eating fish? Few people eat sharks. Show instead, an albacore tuna eating a human; now that would be payback. But wait, tuna don’t eat people.

The PETA spokesmodel also said, “People have the choice to be kind every time they sit down to a meal,” inferring that eating meat or fish or … is somehow unkind. As far as I know, few carnivorous people consume living, conscious, animals. If the entrée isn’t aware it’s being consumed, how is that unkind? No doubt they are referring to the inhumane practices of meat processors, and PETA has a point there.

Without polling PETA membership as to their religious persuasion, one gets the idea they see humans not as God’s special creation, but as just another animal produced by impersonal evolution. If they choose to believe I’m having Aunt Bessie for dinner tonight at Sizzler, that’s their business, and if they get their jollies practicing their vegan lifestyle, more power to ‘em.

I admire those who personally practice their convictions diligently. Even more so when said convictions pass the hypocrisy test. Here’s what I mean: PETA-type folks generally support abortion, and advocate using murdered preborn human remains for medical research involving stem cells. So, granting them the argument that humans are just another form of animal life, how is using human flesh any less cruel than using animal flesh? After all, research has proven that late-term fetuses feel pain the same as peopof all ages, and strong evidence exists that even younger preborn humans feel pain.

Is butchering preborn humans alive somehow more ethical than eating animals? Lets start up a nonprofit called PETPH (People for the Ethical Treatment of Preborn Humans). But, that won’t work. PETPH doesn’t flow off the tongue as easily.