051130 PETA Launches Latest Anti-Meat Effort

Denver , CO - Want to find out the latest about the poultry or beef industry? An animal-rights group hopes that curious consumers happen onto its new Web site with the deceptive sounding domain name, view the video from slaughterhouses and drop all plans for a big juicy streak or fried chicken.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals has a new Web site at www.meat.org that it hopes will draw in the public in this era of fears about bird flu and mad cow disease.

The video "Meet your Meat," narrated by actor Alec Baldwin, flashes images of chickens, turkeys, pigs and cattle being beaten and scalded and having their throats slit, all caught on what PETA says is undercover video of routine operations over the last 10 years.

"We're using the very democratic Internet to reach people and let them know if they're eating meat, they're supporting cruelty to animals," said Bruce Friedrich of Washington, D.C.-based PETA.

He said people should also be concerned about food and worker safety because the multibillion-dollar meat industry is mostly focused on profits. For example, he said, tens of thousands of chickens are crammed together, pumped full of antibiotics so they don't spread diseases and often forced to wallow in their excrement.

"If the bird flu comes to the United States, it could be the proverbial chickens coming home to roost when it spreads through the chicken and turkey populations," Friedrich said.

The flu has killed at least 63 people in Asia and hundreds of thousands of chickens have been killed.

Industry officials dismissed PETA's latest shot at them. They said rising demand and sales show the public feels good about the product.

"Consumers, in the United States particularly, are very savvy, very thoughtful. Web sites like this don't really have a net effect on consumers," said Gary Weber, executive director of regulatory affairs at the Denver-based National Cattlemen's Beef Association.

American Meat Institute spokeswoman Janet Riley expressed frustration with what she called "the battle of the domain names."

It's not the first time that PETA has acquired a domain name with the intent of luring unsuspecting Internet surfers. In January 2004, after the discovery of the first of the country's two mad cow cases, the pro-vegetarian group launched Beef.com, featuring a foaming-at-the-mouth cow and the warning, "It's mad to eat meat."

Federal regulators and industry officials say increased monitoring and safeguards have made the U.S. beef industry even safer.

This week, however, the Government Accountability Office released a report saying testing is too slow at times to prevent cattle from eating feed that might be contaminated. Regulators disputed the findings.

Feed containing cattle parts is believed to cause the brain-wasting disease, bovine spongiform encephalopathy.

Riley questioned the accuracy of the video in PETA's new campaign, saying that a 2001 investigation by Washington state authorities found that footage by a different animal-rights group had been heavily edited. She said the meat industry is one of the most heavily inspected in the country, must comply with a law demanding that animals be killed humanely and has its own animal-care guidelines

"Our position is under no circumstances should animals be mistreated," Weber said.

Friedrich contends the industry has successfully lobbied against tougher laws. He said the law requiring that animals be insensible to pain before slaughter exempts birds. "Of the 10 billion animals slaughtered each year, more than 95 percent of them are birds," he said.

Making matters worse, Friedrich said, is that the U.S. Department of Agriculture can't order a company to recall tainted meat. Farm animals are injured and killed in ways that would be crimes if they were cats or dogs, he said.

RETURN TO HOME PAGE

E-mail: sflanagan@sprintmail.com