IEATAPETA DAY

Monday, March 15 is not only the Ides of March. It’s IEATAPETA Day!

That’s International Eat a Tasty Animal for PETA Day, in case you are unfamiliar with the acronym. Seeing Meryl Yourish’s post yesterday served as a timely reminder; it reminded me, as well, of a very pleasant pre-IEATAPETA luncheon we enjoyed with Ms. Yourish two years ago.

The point of observing IEATAPETA Day is to figuratively thumb one’s nose at PETA, an organization that sees nothing wrong with comparing the consumption of food animals to slavery... or to the Holocaust. This four-year-old post of Meryl’s says it all:

The [notorious 2003] PETA ad campaign compared the slaughter of chickens for food to the slaughter of six million Jews by the Nazis. They traveled the country with a series of billboards that used Holocaust imagery next to images of animals. They lied to the American Holocaust Museum to obtain permission to use these pictures in their ad campaign.

It’s a well-known fact that PETA has always chosen sensationalism in their ad campaigns. They’re usually stupid and offensive, but this campaign caused enough pain that a child of Holocaust survivors wrote me a letter asking if there weren’t something we could do about it. That’s why I created the first International Eat an Animal for PETA Day...

...Don’t get me wrong. I am utterly against animal cruelty. But I am also utterly against cruelty to humans, and especially against the misuse of Holocaust imagery to get a point across.

I see nothing evil about the idea that humans, who sit atop the food chain (unless one is in the jungle or deep in the woods), should use animals as a protein source. If you’re squeamish about eating animals qua animals, there are plenty of animal-derived products - eggs, milk, butter, and cheese - that do not require that animals give up their lives. But to PETA, even this is unacceptable. To them, even keeping company with Animal Companions - pets - constitutes unacceptable exploitation. They forget that the domesticated animals with whom we share our planet have mutually evolved, along with us, to be what they are today because of their having been “exploited” by humans for their food value... or for their company.

What am I gonna eat? Well, having just polished off a lovely brisket of beef last night, perhaps we will move on to beasts somewhat higher on the Cuteness Scale. A lambie, or a duckie, perhaps. Or, in deference to the Missus (who will let neither lambie or duckie cross her lips), a nice veal chop. I also have a few nice chunks of Bambi in the freezer...

Alas, whale bacon is not on the menu: You can’t get it here.

Update: How did I celebrate IEATAPETA Day? I breakfasted on eggs (stolen from exploited chickens) and cheese (from cows enslaved by The Man). Since I wasn’t overly hungry, I had a simple suppler consisting of a couple of slices of Strasburg Pie: fatty duck liver baked into a puff pastry crust. What it lacked in volume it made up for in Caloric Concentration. Yummy!