PETA Using Games To Spread Its Message 477
Cooking Mama is a series of games for the Wii and the DS in which players go through a number of steps to prepare meals using a variety of recipes. Last week, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) created their own Flash-based parody of the game, highlighting the use of meat products by having a more bloody-minded Mama do things like pull the internal organs from a Thanksgiving turkey. Cooking Mama's maker, Majesco, issued a light-hearted response, pointing out the vegetarian meals in the game. PETA then said they plan to continue making parody games as a way of "engaging the public."
In my world (Score:4, Informative)
Their next game - Pet Killers (Score:5, Informative)
Of course it would be based on the actual experiences of PETA staffers: http://www.petakillsanimals.com/ [petakillsanimals.com]
Re:As they say... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Bullshit on PETA (Score:2, Informative)
Re:lol peta (Score:3, Informative)
Foie Gras [wikipedia.org] is an extremely popular dish around the world that, depending on your definition of torture, is prepared via torturing the animals.
It's duck liver (though other fowl Foie Gras is produced) that has been enlarged through the practice of force-feeding the animal. While it is been banned in some countries it's available in the US, Canada, the UK, France etc. It's actually a very traditional meat in French cuisine and the vast majority of fine dining French restaurants feature it on their menu.
It's so popular, though controversial, that many farmers have developed means of producing it that does not involve force-feeding. On one episode of The F-Word (a British food show hosted by Gordan Ramsay) they presented Chef Ramsay with a blind taste test of traditional Foie Gras vs. non-force fed with the agreement that if he couldn't tell the difference he would switch to non-force fed in all of his restaurants. He did spot it though.
Of course it's totally different than skinning an animal alive ... but it's an example of an extremely popular food that is prepared in a method that many view as unethical.
Re:Ok, Pulling the internal organs out of a turkey (Score:2, Informative)
Reason 5: Plants aren't on the same level as human beings.
Then why are cows? Rabbits? Sheep? Birds? Insects? Where is this magical, arbitrary line that says it's okay to eat a pumpkin but not to eat a fish?
This seems to be the sticking point with most non-(seemingly-)dogmatic vegetarians I've met. I cannot understand this magic line that is drawn between 'sensory input->reaction' and 'pain->reaction'. They are one in the same. As humans we empathize with cry of a mammal. Is this not a reason FOR distant far-off slaughterhouses rather than for the removal of a (reasonably) critical fraction of our natural diet?
I'm also a biochemist - I know very well the processes involved. I understand that the pain I feel is simply a much more complicated variant of the sensing done in the amoebas I study.
I fear that this is simply an extension of the anthropocentric view that denies the fact that we are simply complicated versions of everything else - nothing less, nothing more.
Re:The case against meat (Score:4, Informative)
I grew up with a love of animals and I'm also a culinary student and an aspiring chef. As such, I eat meat. Lots of meat. I can't get enough of it.
I satisfy my moral issues by caring about where my meat comes from. I won't give money to super farms that raise animals in poor conditions and give them antibiotics, steroids and cheap feed. These farms also often employ workers who really don't give a rats ass about the treatment of the animals or the quality of the meat that they're producing. They're getting paid crap and they follow the procedures in order to keep their jobs without any kind of care what-so-ever. A close friend of mine worked on such a farm when he was a teenager and went vegetarian.
I prefer free-range, organic. Before I started cooking I used to think those were just buzz-words. But in Canada, the US and the UK they're not just random marketing gibberish. They're regulated. You can't advertise a product as organic unless it's been certified (and in Canada, where I'm from, the packaging has to state the name of the certification body that certified the product - I can't say for other countries). Free-range means the animals aren't confined in cages and are free to roam around the farm etc. I firmly believe that this meat is better for you and far better quality. It's produced by people who care. They care about the product that they're selling you and thus they care about the animal. The end result is meat that tastes better and comes from an animal that wasn't mistreated.
The abattoirs are also important. In countries that regulate, animals need to be slaughtered in licensed abattoirs that slaughter the animal in a humane method. Cows are slaughtered by injecting them with a powerful sedative to knock them unconscious and then their throat is cut and the animal is drained. It's over very fast. Most other animals are slaughtered via a powerful electrical current through the brain, followed by draining.
If you can't get over raising an animal and killing it for food then it won't matter how the animal is raised or slaughtered. The way I see it, the earth is extremely brutal. If you look at animals that use venom to subdue their prey sometimes it's terrifying what the prey goes through. Humans can be better but in the end we're just another animal. Everything eats other life, even vegetarians. If we want to take a moral high ground then I believe we can do that with how we treat our food before it becomes food. Not all farms mistreat their livestock and there's a whole industry growing around farms that give their livestock better lives than many humans get.
Re:lol peta (Score:3, Informative)
I draw the line at carnivores ; for reasons of both health and efficiency.
It takes 10 kilos (or more) of vegetable matter to make a single kilo of herbivourous meat. The same ratio applies to carnivorous meat, only they are eating meat ; so carnivorous meat animals are incredibly inefficient to farm.
In addition, because carnviores are at the top of the food chain, they are far more likely to carry diseases that would infect us (caught from their prey or feed), and they also bioconcentrate all non-eliminable toxins from the food chain below ; for an example you only have to consider Minamata Bay [wikipedia.org] ; mercury compounds discharged into fishing waters at "safe" concentrations were concentrated by the food chain until it reached toxic concentrations in the human population.