PETA's Language Barrier

The animal rights group PETA is offering a 1 million dollar prize to the first team of scientists to produce commercially viable meat in a laboratory. Their website declares that they have "overcome (their) revulsion to flesh eating," and are offering this prize as a practical solution--and olive branch--to join forces with those unenlightened individuals who just can't get past their addiction to eating animals.

This proposal reeks of the same cluelessness that makes it difficult for PETA and other militant vegans to bridge the gap with so many people who could be potential allies. As a species we're ripe for a change in our attitudes towards eating meat. Rampant food and water shortages are daily reminders that, unless we start eating less meat, there won't be enough food to go around. Methane gas from livestock is the single biggest source of the greenhouse gases that cause global warming.

But the PETA solution reminds me of US food aid missions that send peanut butter into communities where nobody's ever eaten peanut butter. People don't know what to do with the stuff, so they feed it to their animals. There's a culture clash and a language barrier here, and they're probably just going to end up wasting that million dollars which would be better spent on fake blood and chicken suits.

You don't reach out to people by calling their food disgusting, even if you're supposedly trying to help them find a more sustainable and humane way to produce their disgusting food.