As the New Zealand government moves forward with plans to phase out tobacco sales, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) has written to Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, asking her also to phase out carcinogenic meat products.
The World Health Organization (WHO) classifies processed meats – which include hot dogs, ham, bacon, sausages, corned beef, biltong, beef jerky, canned meat, and meat-based preparations and sauces – as IARC Group 1, “carcinogenic to humans” – placing them in the same category as tobacco. This classification is based on sufficient evidence from epidemiological studies that eating processed meat causes colorectal cancer.
Meanwhile, red meats, such as beef, veal, pork, lamb, mutton, and goat, have been labelled IARC Group 2A, “probably carcinogenic to humans”. WHO noted that the “strongest, but still limited, evidence for an association with eating red meat is for colorectal cancer. There is also evidence of links with pancreatic cancer and prostate cancer”.
“Of course,” PETA writes, “meat is a death sentence for some 22 million sensitive New Zealand animals annually, who – after enduring miserable lives much shorter than is natural – are crammed into trucks and taken to blood-soaked slaughterhouses where they will be shot with captive-bolt guns before their throats are slit and they are dismembered. In the ways that matter, these animals are no different from those with whom many of us share our homes, yet a sense of human supremacy allows people to pay to have them treated in ways that would be illegal were they cats or dogs.”
The group goes on to point out that New Zealand’s rising emissions problem could also be addressed by phasing out animal agriculture, noting that farmed animals are responsible for almost three-quarters of New Zealand’s agricultural emissions.
PETA – whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to eat” – opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETA.org.au.
PETA’s letter to Prime Minister Ardern is available here.
Every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you. As a cook I can survive without meat and eat a balanced diet but for many it is a easy way to get the requirements to stay healthy
I think you missed the point of the article, they were suggesting that the evidence shows that animal products & especially processed meats were not healthy for us along with the requirement to kill the animal being politically incorrect. Plant food could feed the world human population although then we would need to get rid of lots of farmed animals so some sort of compromise is probably the answer.
Bonnie The link between meat eating and bowel cancer has been known about, and researched, and published about in New Zealand for many decades. Don’t forget that there was a time when New Zealanders would often eat, and expect to eat meat 3x daily – starting with sausages or chops for breakfast. Shearers and high country workers lived on mutton often cooked by the homesteaders’ wives in non-optimum conditions. I’ve one OU Med School Prof’s booklet on bowel cancer from about the mid 1980’s.
Processed meat like bacon and ham has been known about for yonks, but I’m not sure of the time frames. Animals do not have to be slaughtered inhumanely. Cultural killing practices also differ, including in New Zealand.
Trevor S. “ Every moving thing that live the shall be meat for you. “ Well I for one, think that eating people is wrong, and that those colonialists were right to discourage Maori from cannibalising each other. I suppose that eating people might be alright if one’s plane crashes in the Andes, or food’s getting low on a life raft adrift at sea, but I don’t like the idea. And who in their right mind would eat a politician when rat grills up quite nicely ?
Most processed food is health- threatening crap anyway. That includes breads, cakes, biscuits, pastries, those nugget things served at govt dept happy hours, pickles, chutneys, and relishes, lollies, and tinned fishes full of mercury and more poisons than cigarettes. Alcohol.
Live on vegetables, grains, pulses, fruit and herbs in moderation, year after year after year. Climate change may alter all that too, in which case hope and a prayer might do – or birds of the air if they’re still there; cockroaches have good staying power, plus wood lice. Maggots. Enjoy.
Sausages and mash ?
Vote Chris Luxon and save the Kiwi pie.
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