Tuesday, October 14, 2008

Attempting to Keep Meat Out of Schools

Anti-Processed Meat Campaign Is As Extreme As the Pro-Vegan, Animal Rights Group Behind It

Last update: 6:29 p.m. EDT Oct. 10, 2008

WASHINGTON, Oct 10, 2008 /PRNewswire-USNewswire via COMTEX/ -- "A petition to ban processed meats from the school lunch program is as extreme as the pro-vegan, animal rights group behind it," said American Meat Institute (AMI) Foundation President Randy Huffman, Ph.D.

According to Huffman, the petition was submitted to USDA by a group calling itself "The Cancer Project." The group is run by the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM), a radical organization that has only a tiny percentage of doctors in its ranks. Their tactics have been sharply criticized by many in the mainstream medical community.

Ronald Kleinman, M.D., head of the pediatric gastrointestinal unit at Massachusetts General Hospital and former head of the American Academy of Pediatrics Nutrition Committee, has called the group's tactics "outrageous."

"There is no established relationship between the normal consumption of processed foods and the risk of colon cancer," he said. Kleinman has also criticized the TV commercial that is part of this larger campaign. The ad depicts child actors in a school setting saying they have colon cancer. The ads suggest that the disease was caused by processed meats consumed at school. "The video is exploiting children in the worst possible way. It's appalling to see a child used to advance a political agenda," Kleinman told one media outlet. Read More

Less than 5% of PCRM’s membership is made up of physicians and the science they tend to promote is more in-line with their activist agenda than the truth. Claiming that eating processed meat is solely responsible for causing cancer is more than a stretch. There are many groups with legitimate sounding names that are mostly interested in telling you how you should live your life. Anytime you see a report like this, you should research the group that is promoting it and find out what their true goals are.

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