Today, The Times did a bang-up job of reporting on the ‘in vitro’ meat contest, in which PETA US are offering $1 million to the first scientist to come up with a marketable lab-grown meat product. The paper version even lovingly printed the ‘Newkirk Nuggets’ box image that you can see below, harking back to a little prank we played on April 1st. Read more about why ‘in vitro’ is the future at Times Online.
7
Apr
So, there’s a new PETA ad coming out that points out the similarities between eating human and animal flesh. This is in response to former Liberian President Charles Taylor’s trial. Former President Taylor is alleged to have cannibalised his enemies, peacekeepers and U.N. Personnel by the International War Crimes Tribunal – the ad is meant for making people think about exactly who they are guilty of eating:
“Their struggles and cries were ignored”, reads the ad. “They were dragged to the knife … their bodies were mutilated and their throats were slit … they were decapitated, dismembered and carved up … their corpses were put in a pot seasoned with salt and pepper … and their heads and bones were discarded. It’s still going on!”
Call me a cynic – but that sounds like every day for millions of animals languishing in factory farms worldwide to me!
PETA’s Managing Director Ingrid Newkirk spoke out “When it comes to the terror and suffering of being killed to be eaten, all animals – including the human animal – are equal, in the 21st century, there is no excuse for not going vegetarian.”
As some of you may have figured out by now, sadly Newkirk Nuggets will not be hitting our shops any time soon as it was in fact an April Fools prank. Pretty convincing stuff though, eh? Sounds like other blogs were impressed anyway, but how many people took the bait? Some of you commented on how you might give it a try, and others were less enthusiastic about the ‘cannibalistic’ nature of the human(e) meat. This may have been a joke, but I bet it’s something that’s not too far off in the future. Hey, whatever saves the billions of animals dying for the world’s dinner-plates, right?
1
Apr
I have some exciting and astonishing news: PETA US have developed the world’s first human ‘in vitro’ meat, produced from a biopsy of Ingrid Newkirk, our managing director. Dubbed as a “human(e)” alternative to eating the flesh of animals, who are slaughtered in their millions every day, the first batch of Newkirk Nuggets will go on display and be available be taste tested at our London office by an invitation-only panel of bioscientists and commercial meat-industry representatives.
The breakthrough has been in the making for 11 years in laboratories spread across three countries, but finally it’s here and we are all on tenterhooks waiting to see the meat for the first time. The aim has been to grow animal tissue with the taste, texture and, most difficult of all, the “skin depth” or muscle mass of fish and chicken. According to the experts: “The tissue was taken from Ingrid’s upper arm and cultured in a “nutrient soup” of mushrooms, human collagen and soy broth to form myoblasts. The myoblasts reproduce rapidly to form ¾-inch-thick sheets of what PETA calls “100 per cent victimless meat.”
Ingrid says: “If you know something is dirty, bad for your body and cruel, but you still do it, you can only be addicted. Victimless meat is none of those things, and it satisfies meat cravings in the only ethical way that I know of, other than eating road kill. They say, ‘Everything tastes like chicken’ – and now, so do I.”
So, the question is –will meat eaters, eat it?
Ever heard of the Colbert Report? Me neither, but from what I’ve heard it’s huge in the US. Seriously, one of the biggest and funniest shows on Comedy Central over there, or so I’m told – and PETA’s Ingrid Newkirk was on it last week!
Read more and watch the clip at Jack’s great blog The PETA Files (though we are rivals in a sense, so don’t get too comfy).
Update: Ingrid Newkirk just sent me a fab photo of her blindfolding Gandhi in India, shortly before she was arrested. Check it out - way to go!
You may have heard that PETA’s Managing Director Ingrid Newkirk was arrested in Coimbatore, India, the other day for blindfolding a Mahatma Gandhi statue during the notorious Jallikatu. Why did she do it?
As she explains in her letter to The Times newspaper, who covered the story, these tormented bulls are treated in much the same way as those forced to take part in the Running of the Bulls in Pamplona. She was simply trying to “symbolically shield” his eyes from the cruel spectacle taking place in front of him.
You can read more about what horrors go on at Jallikatu here.
“Videos of Jallikattu now circulating on the Internet show what the bulls endure and that veterinarians cannot possibly monitor the animals to prevent the common practice of dosing them with crude alcohol and rubbing chilli peppers into their eyes,” writes Ingrid. Right on!
Luckily for us PETA folks and the animals, Ingrid was released and allowed to continue her India tour.
