Meet Your Meat...If You Dare

Feast your eyes upon the grotesque matter that is known as "mechanically separated meat". This photograph, which has gone viral over the past week or so, candidly exposes the stuff of which chicken nuggets, hot dogs, and bologna are made.

There it is, a pink, gelatinous batter, coiled soft-serve style like a freshly-minted cat turd. It looks like no poultry that I have ever seen. If chickens were intelligent beings, they would look at this pasty, pink mush and wonder how it ever could have been recognizably one of their own. Then they might compare its makers with Hitler and call for a coalition of the willing to end this monstrous practice.

I wouldn't blame them. I am a proponent of eating meat, and veganism/animal rights activism pisses me off. However, the photograph above is a damning indictment of just how low our nutrition standards have become. If you want chicken, eat chicken. Don't eat hardened chicken glue.

Apparently, there was once something called "mechanically separated beef" as well. It is now illegal to produce such beef products due to health regulations. If mechanically separated beef is illegal, then the legally acceptable chicken-stuff must not be terribly far behind on the unhealthiness scale.

For having such a high standard of living, Americans sure do love to eat shit. No wonder our national waistline is expanding.

Whacky PETA Activists Make Cheese From...Breastmilk???

This is one of the most bizarre and creepy things I have seen in months. PETA is trumpeting the arrival of a new kind of cheese. It is a cheese that does not involve animal dairy products. It is breast milk cheese. Luckily, this is only being done in one restaurant in New York. However, it strikes me as degrading, in light of my unshakeable belief in human exceptionalism. Mother's milk is meant for the nourishment of human infants. Shouldn't that be intuitive enough for most people?

Also, as far as sheer social niceties are concerned, can you imagine the social awkwardness and relational complications of eating something made from an adult woman's breast milk? Sorry, Katie, your stuff is okay, but I prefer the Brie. It could get awkward.

I despise PETA, and always have. Their radicalism is frightening. I would be more amenable to hearing about why KFC is evil for abusing its chickens if the people telling me about the abuse weren't a bunch of bullying, psychotic, left-wing nutjobs.

It's no secret that this group has done unsavory things. They handed out comic books to kids that proclaim Your Mommy Kills Animals. How low is that? And for a group that promotes animal rights, they sure kill a lot of animals. PETA admits to putting down critters on this awesome website, aptly titled PETA Kills Animals.

Additionally, PETA's highly sexualized ad campaigns have done more to degrade gullible, attractive women than they have to win over people's minds to the animal rights cause. When I look at PETA's materials, all I see are naked girls in cages and on billboards. Forgive me for not getting past that imagery. One recent stunt, involving a naked pregnant girl in a cage on Mother's Day, ranks as one of the least tasteful things since dead-animal jewelry hit the market.

My take: animals are made out of meat. Meat has been incredibly useful to human society. How we treat animals does say something about our own humanity (those kids who post themselves burning bunny-rabbits on YouTube are worthless hoodlums). However, animals in and of themselves do not share in our humanity. We ought to treat other creatures well because of our own dignity, not theirs.