Dueling Bombast

Did you know your local fast food restaurant is knowingly selling cancer-laced chicken?

That's the claim of a lawsuit by the Washington-based Cancer Project. The shadowy group has filed a lawsuit in Hartford, CT claiming McDonald's, Burger King and others are peddling chicken that contains PhIP, and they want a warning on the products. While the group claims they aren't interested in stopping the sale of fast food chicken, the restaurant industry is claiming the lawsuit is part of the "animal rights movement" and its goal of ending the consumption of meat.

Their solution? Bring out their own flacks. The preposterously-named Center for Consumer Freedom (CCF) has issued its own press release charging this is all part of a "conspiracy." The Center is also Washington-based, and is funded by the restaurant, food manufacturing and supermarket industries.

Regular readers of this blog know I've talked about the hazards of meat. Americans especially eat too much meat, and the natural resources expended on meat production are a huge drain on the planet, as well as the cause of extra greenhouse gases from the methane in cow, pig and chicken scat, the fertilizer used to grow the corn that fattens up beef, or the gasoline burned up bringing the meat to market.

But is the answer a lawsuit to require restaurants to notify patrons that eating a grilled chicken (considered a "better for you" alternative to red meat!) is a toxic threat? Cooking meat releases chemicals that can be carcinogenic, though medical researchers aren't entirely sure in what amounts they constitute a threat. The current controversy about cooking potatoes at high heat (which produces a potentially-carcinogenic chemical called Acrylamide) is another example.

The animal rights and vegan groups would have us only eat plants. Is that a better alternative? Maybe. But shouldn't that be my choice?

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