Author’s New Cookbook Aims to Satirize Animal Rights Groups with Recipes Using Household Pets

In PEOPLE EATING TASTY ANIMALS, author Robert Arlen uses black humor to create a recipe book meant to shock and amuse.

VIRGINIA BEACH, VA - In PEOPLE EATING TASTY ANIMALS, Robert Arlen takes on what he feels is one animal rights group's over-the-top stance on animal rights by producing a cookbook for meals made from whales, poodles and more. Author Robert Arlen is an animal lover who has also owned two different pet stores. Yet, he increasingly found fault with the way the animal rights agencies do business to achieve their goals. Wanting to have some fun, he created PEOPLE EATING TASTY ANIMALS, a book of recipeshe intends to poke fun at such groups and generate lauther.

Arlen provides real-sounding, intricate recipes for such dishes as Cheetah Chimichanga, Barbecued Beaver and Cat Tacos. He suggests people savemoney by eating the meat of their 50-pound poodle when it dies, and he points out that a beached whale could be an economical meal choicethat could simply supple enough meat for an entire family reunion. Filled with color illustrations, the book is designedto be placed on the coffee table, opened at any page and shared with friends.

PEOPLE EATING TASTY ANIMALS is available for sale at Amazon.com, Booksurge and through additional wholesale and retail channels worldwide.

About the author Robert Arlen has owned two pet shops, loves animals and wishes PETA had a sense of humor. He currently lives in Virginia Beach, VA and he says he has personally never tried any of the recipes in PEOPLE EATING TASTY ANIMALS.

Thursday, November 24, 2011

Why PETA Is Meat’s Best Friend

Jokes are not the best way to deal with the question of animal suffering

By Josh Ozersky

Eating meat involves killing animals, an act few of us ever witness, let alone participate in. I’m okay with that; I’ve gone on record as saying that I love meat and animals but never want to be present at the moment when one becomes the other. That’s me. But many other Americans are ambivalent, and on the eve of the biggest dead-animal holiday of the year, the highest-profile animal rights organization in the country, PETA, has failed, yet again, to make anybody feel remotely bad about eating animals.




What’s unfortunate for that organization is that in the same week it did one of its idiotic publicity stunts — asking Turkey, Texas, to change its name to Tofurkey, Texas — somebody else did the job PETA should have been doing and documented the abuses taking place at Sparboe Farms, a massive egg farm that sold to McDonald’s. 20/20’s video, which is ghastly, succeeded in getting McDonald’s and fellow Sparboe customer Target to immediately drop it as a supplier. No Sandusky-style “internal investigation,” no temporizing, no excuses; just a swift stroke of the knife. When that happened, untold millions of chickens were spared the cruelties shown so starkly in the video. For farms of that scale, losing McDonald’s is tantamount to Lockheed losing the Pentagon. It’s practically their reason for being. And you can bet other big suppliers don’t want to lose McDonald’s either. So real-world economic pressures changed the way animals live and die in America — just as they did in 2007, when Burger King became the first of the fast-food giants to implement a cruelty-free meat program.

Meanwhile, PETA, which should be in the vanguard of this type of thing, just keeps pulling lame pranks that make people like me feel even better about eating meat. Tofurkey, Texas? Really? Everything about the setup is dumb: the idea that the name of a town is equivalent to killing the thing it’s named for, the choice of a Texan town (the birthplace of Bob Wills!), the choice of a weird, fake, tasteless product as a substitute. It’s just so tone-deaf, just like another recent stunt in which PETA went after Super Mario for dressing up like a raccoon. (According to the press release, “Tanooki may be just a ‘suit’ in Mario games, but by wearing the skin of an animal, Mario is sending the message that it’s OK to wear fur.”)

Sometimes I think that PETA is a front group for the National Cattleman’s Council. Why else would its members go out of their way to seem so crankish and pissy? How is that supposed to help? PETA, as one of the biggest animal-rights groups in the world, should be doing more to combat puppy mills, unnecessary and inhumane cosmetic testing and the like. But instead of waiting until it has something really important to say, the group issues dopey agit-prop press releases and what ends up happening is that PETA and the movement it represents becomes a joke. Literally. I wish I had copyrighted that “People for the Eating of Tasty Animals” T-shirt that I see everywhere.


News-Press.com

Monday, November 21, 2011

PETA's latest Thanksgiving scare tactic

By MIKE JONES Associate Editor




Someone tell the folks over at People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals that Halloween is over and they can stop scaring the kids, although it won't do any good.



PETA abides by the old Hollywood axiom of, "I don't care what you say about me as long as you spell my name right." I know that and I'm probably falling right into that trap, but, despite giving PETA publicity, sometimes the things it does simply can't go unnoticed or uncriticized.

PETA has outraged a lot of folks over the years. It is good at it - and it knows it. It hasn't let us down this holiday season. This year PETA is introducing new billboards. A few cities have been targeted, including Tulsa. The billboards are supposed to show up near schools.

The billboard depicts an animal that is a cross between a turkey and a cute black and white dog. It has a dog face and turkey body. The billboard's message: "Kids: If You Wouldn't Eat Your Dog, Why Eat a Turkey?" Seriously, that's what it says.

Baloney

PETA innocently says it hopes to establish a dialogue between kids and parents about becoming a vegetarian rather than eating meat. Baloney. What PETA is trying to do, what it is always trying to do, is frighten kids. It wants to plant a horrible picture in the heads' of prepubescents that will give them nightmares and ruin everybody's Thanksgiving dinner. Does PETA somehow expect such crass behavior to set little ones along the path to the righteousness of veganism?

As of Friday, there had been no reports of PETA's billboards in Tulsa. Maybe PETA had a change of heart. I doubt it. It's more likely it couldn't get the billboard space or is waiting until closer to Thanksgiving.

Let's get something straight. I love animals. I have two rescue dogs in my home. I have always had pets and I've always treated them well. My dogs, these two and previous dogs, are a part of my family. There was a time when cats also resided in my house. All but one of those was a rescue pet. I no longer hunt. I no longer fish. I don't kill spiders (except for black widows) or snakes. I even have trouble doing in the mouse that wanders around my house. (The dogs certainly are no help.) I don't wear fur.

But I have no problems with those who do hunt or fish. I'm not too crazy about people wearing fur and it upsets me when someone kills a snake for no good reason. And I believe that everyone ought get their dogs and cats from the pound or at least someone's unwanted litter.

On the other hand, I grew up around a farm. There were ducks, chickens, dogs, cats, pigs, milk cows, beef cattle, sheep, horses and a few other critters I have forgotten. Back then I hunted and fished. We ate what we killed - squirrels, rabbits, quail, fish and maybe a few other things that my grandpa figured I was better off not knowing about.

One piece of advice I have given my son (maybe the only good advice and likely the only bit he paid attention to) is never give a name to something you might end up eating.

A purpose

Yes, I have seen slaughter houses. I know what goes on there. I've witnessed the process from start to finish. It's not pretty. Admittedly, most of my up-close encounters were with the food we raised and ate. We sent one steer a year off to slaughter, as well as hogs. The chickens we dismissed ourselves on Sundays. I know there are issues with some big corporate farms where cattle, hogs, chickens and turkeys are raised in some pretty sad conditions. I would hope that those conditions can change. I can't bring myself to eat veal.

When you grow up on or around a farm, you learn pretty quickly that everything there has a purpose. Most of those purposes have something to do with eating.

Obviously, I am not against eating meat or poultry or fish or cheese or drinking milk. Neither do I condemn those who don't. I have friends and family members who are or have been vegetarians or vegans. They don't try to convert me nor I them. They certainly don't try to scare the hell out of the kids.

For PETA, however, there is no middle ground, no compromising. Its tactics can be despicable. Taunting customers, again, mostly kids, at burger joints or at fishing derbies. This latest one that puts a turkey on equal footing with a dog does no good toward the cause of vegetarianism. It will do no more than confuse and frighten kids. As far as I'm concerned, it borders on abuse.

The people at PETA ought to be ashamed, but I'm sure they won't be. And they can send me the thank-you note for giving them the publicity for another one of their whacky, tasteless promotions.

Sometimes, however, stupid and mean-spirited simply can't be ignored.

Pass the turkey. Pet the dogs.


Tulsa World

Friday, November 11, 2011

By Chris Davis

TULSA, Okla. —

A new billboard that may go up soon in Tulsa would feature a picture of a crossbred animal meant to educate kids about Thanksgiving turkeys. It's from PETA and they ask, "Kids, if you wouldn't eat your dog, why eat a turkey?"




When we learned PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) may be placing these billboards in the community, we wanted to know what the reasoning was. So, I got on the phone to Paige Snyder, a representative for the group.

"Thanksgiving should be a time for celebration and not a time for animal abuse," she said. "Turkeys may not be as familiar to us as dogs and cats, but they have the same capacity to suffer and that's something kids inately understand."

The plan is to place the billboards near Tulsa schools to spark discussions between kids and parents.

"There are lots of kids out there who just don't want to see a dead bird as a centerpiece at Thanksgiving dinner. Hopefully our billboards will spark discussions with their parents." She says then maybe kids would want to give the turkeys a break.

Snyder told me Tulsa is one of only three cities being targeted with the illustrations.

"We're hoping to get them up in Tulsa, Jacksonville and also Salem, Oregon," she said.

And the alternative Thanksgiving meal-a Tofurky. It's a simulated, largely soy-based meat-like product that PETA officials are certain would delight children who know of the plight of the 250 million turkeys killed in the U.S. each year. Almost 40 million of those are killed for the holiday.

PETA's website says turkeys that are bred for food are often crammed into dirty warehouses and die from disease, smothering or heart attack before being slaughtered. The organization points out that the breeding process makes harvest turkeys overweight and their legs buckle from the excess meat.

PETA says vegan meals are a more humane source for holiday food.

News Talk Radio KRMG.com

Tuesday, November 8, 2011

PETA draws on slavery law to free whales

Animal rights campaigners in the United States have begun a legal battle for the release of five killer whales.

The People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) argue that the whales are being kept as slaves at the SeaWorld marine parks and should be set free under America's 13th Amendment.

"It's the first case in the history of the US that seeks to extend constitutional rights to living, breathing, feeling beings who happen not have been born human," PETA's legal counsel Jeff Kerr said.

Mr Kerr will be taking the case before a judge in California.

"The case is based upon the plain text of the 13th Amendment, which outlaws the condition of slavery, without any reference to any particular class of victims and without reference to persons," he said.

"Slavery does not depend on the species of the slave any more than it depends upon the gender, race, or religion of the slave."

Thomas Jefferson School of Law professor David Steinberg says he finds PETA's claim surprising.

"I never believed that I would hear an argument that human slaves were comparable to animals in a zoo but that is in essence PETA's argument," he said.

"The 13th Amendment was designed to abolish the abhorrent practice of slavery, of enslaving human beings without compensation, treating human beings as property.

"That is something entirely different from the question of whether a marine park like Sea World should or should not have orcas."

But Mr Kerr said it was clear to him that the whales were suffering in captivity.

"By any reasonable definition, these five orcas are enslaved," he said.

"They were forcibly ripped from their homes and families, with whom they would have spent their entire life in nature, they're held captive in the equivalent of concrete bathtubs that cause them great stress and illness and make them aggressive.

"They're denied everything natural to them, they're forced to perform tricks for SeaWorld's profit and they've been turned into virtual breeding machines to churn out more performers for Sea World's tawdry shows.

"So these wild captured animals who are now forced to perform for fleeting human amusement, are by any reasonable definition slaves."

Professor Steinberg however says the 13th Amendment was never intended to apply to animals.

"It was obvious that slavery meant slavery of human beings," he said.

"The fact that it doesn't say people is because the term was unnecessary to the 13th Amendment, it would have been surplusage."

In a statement, SeaWorld said it had no higher priority than the welfare of the animals in its care.

Mr Kerr however is convinced that the days of marine parks for large mammals are numbered.

"This is going to happen whether it's in this lawsuit or next month or next year, the fundamental rights of animals to be free from human enslavement is going to be recognised," he said.

"It's just a question of when and we believe that the time is right, certainly we believe that the public is ready, we know the orcas are definitely ready and we believe that the law is in place.
"So we're anxious to have the case heard."

Yahoo! 7 News

PETA targets Battlefield 3 for cruelty against rats

EA's wartime shooter cited in animal rights complaint
Matt Bradford on November 8, 2011

A German branch of PETA, the worldwide animal rights organization that apparently uses Minority Report-esque technology to predict and fight future animal crimes, is taking Battlefield 3 to task over its murderous treatment of virtual rats; a treatment, it says, that will motivate young men to practice their rat-killing impulses on real life victims.

“The realistic computer game 'Battlefield 3' treats animals in a sadistic manner,” reads part of PETA translated statement. “The game gives players the option to kill a rat with a combat knife in the back in order to then lift it by its tail, then toss it away. Killing virtual animals can have a brutalizing effect on the young male target audience. There have been repeated cases of animal cruelty in Germany, where young people kill animals. Inspiration behind these acts often came from movies and computer games.”


There is some merit to the argument that fictitious violence—be it in TV, movies, video games, or 1940s radio plays--begets real life violence in a tiny sub-section of unbalanced players. Still, to say BF3 should be called out for its rat killing is like saying Grand Theft Auto IV should be flogged for its depiction of crimes against mail boxes; that is, there are bigger fish to fry--er...sorry...to be let free to swim forever in blissful harmony with nature.

The last time PETA took aim at video games was with the launch of its Super Meat Boy mock game, Super Tofu Boy. Perhaps this means we'll soon be playing Rattlefield 3?

GamesRadar