Category Archive: Big Fat Lies

1. Dr. Oz: Animal Rights Activist?

   April 28, 2011 12:00 am Comments Off on Dr. Oz: Animal Rights Activist?

   Daytime television’s self-promoting “YOU Doc” Dr. Mehmet Oz entertained us Wednesday with his assault on meat and dairy, offering up his talk show's couch to a vegan activist group that twists medical research to claim non-tofu proteins come with major health risks.

   In typical Oz fashion, he promised to tell his audience what they “need to avoid in order to avoid getting cancer and heart disease.” And who better to fill everybody in than Neal Barnard?

   Groan.

   Barnard, for the unfamiliar, is president of the PETA-linked “Physicians Committee” for Responsible Medicine (PCRM), which gets most of its funding from a single wealthy animal-rights activist in Florida. Barnard, who has called cheese “dairy crack” and tried to sue milk companies for causing “pain and suffering” to lactose intolerant Americans, predictably railed against non-PETA-approved diets.

   Oz promoted his guest’s agenda as “a different way of thinking about what you do in your day-to-day life.” Yes, we suppose that’s true. Barnard’s past claim that “to give a child animal products is a form of child abuse” is certainly, um… different. And Oz never told his audience that Barnard (a non-practicing psychiatrist) was once the president of the PETA Foundation—the organization that owns PETA’s office building and pays its salaries.

   Oz helpfully suggests, “Don’t call it a diet.” And he’s right. Barnard’s advice is animal-rights ideology on a plate.

   Eating nutrient-rich vegetables and fruits is a great idea, but so is eating nutrient-rich animal products. It’s difficult to swallow a stealthily masked, ideology-fueled prescription when it’s passed off as a cancer cure-all.

   Has the good doctor (Oz, not Barnard) been fooled or is he a willing accomplice?

2. Yes, PETA Still Kills Animals

   March 18, 2011 12:00 am Comments Off on Yes, PETA Still Kills Animals

   People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) typically has a knack for making ugly things sexy (and vice-versa). Ironically, the radical animal rights group still hasn’t figured out a way to spin the fact that its own animal shelter has euthanized more than 25,000 homeless pets since 1998—so PETA prefers to keep it quiet. Good thing we have access to public records.

   According to its 2010 “Animal Record,” filed with the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, PETA killed 94 percent of the cats and dogs in its shelter last year. PETA rationalizes that “open-admission shelters” like the one it operates provided these 2,200 animals with “a painless release from a world that does not want them.”

   These new statistics bump PETA’s body-count up to 25,840 since 1998. Conversely, the Virginia Beach SPCA, just down the road from PETA’s Norfolk headquarters, manages to adopt out the vast majority of the animals in its care (85% adoption rate in 2009). Talk about the difference that “going the extra mile” could make for helping an unwanted pet find a new home.

   Years of public outrage still have not been enough to convince PETA to eliminate its pet eradication program. Sadly, we are not expecting 2011 to be any more promising for homeless cats and dogs condemned to live out their last days on PETA’s version of “death row."

   Instead of investing in the lives of the adoptable pets in its care, PETA prefers to spend a sizeable chunk of its $33 million annual budget on glitzy media campaigns telling Americans—especially impressionable young children—that eating meat, drinking milk, fishing, hunting, wearing leather shoes, and benefiting from medical research performed on lab rats are all “unethical.”

   For the 12th year in a row, PETA’s leaders prove again that they care more about preserving their advertising budget than finding homes for the six pets per day, on average, that they needlessly kill. Let’s see them try to make that statistic sexy with a head of lettuce and a supermodel.