Author: ConsumerFreedom.com Headlines

A survey conducted by the UK-funded Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board (AHDB) finds that few consumers are willing to pay extra for meat that boasts a lower carbon footprint. Some foodie activists erroneously argue that livestock-related greenhouse emissions play a major role in contributing to global warming, despite all the evidence that such doomsday predictions are bogus. And still, the demand for more “earth-friendly” red meat just isn’t there: The AHDB survey of 2,000 people revealed that only one in eight of us is willing to pay extra for feel-good meat.

Half of consumers are “very concerned” about global warming and many wanted to “do their bit.” But they clearly aren’t putting their money where their mouth is.

“The impact of meat consumption on global warming is off the radar for most consumers and other considerations get in the way,” says AHDB interim chief executive Richard Lowe. “Most say they are willing to do their bit, but not really when it comes to making a personal or financial sacrifice.”

Such sacrifice is all for naught anyway. We pointed to the glaring errors in a 2006 United Nations report that claimed 18 percent of global greenhouse gases are related to animal agriculture. In 2008, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency calculated that the entire agriculture sector accounted for only 6 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, while sources directly related to livestock production represented barely 2.5 percent of the total.

If there’s one thing everyone should know about the phony “doctors” group known as the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM), it’s that its leaders are vehement vegetarians who dress up PETA-style PR flacking with an air of medical authority. When PCRM was asked to comment on a recent story about a new USDA beef report, it sent its attack machine into high gear for a newscast in Washington, D.C.:

"These are unhealthy contaminants and people should avoid them as much as possible," said Mark Kennedy, staff attorney for Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine. … "The problem is compounding day-to-day because of the way factory farming is creating more and more problems," said Kennedy.

As far as PCRM is concerned, of course, the most worrisome contaminant in beef is the beef part. The vegan organization has a disreputable track record a mile long of sounding alarm bells over animal protein, including perfectly safe foods from hot dogs to milk. PCRM is currently campaigning to take the stuffing (and the sloppy joes and the chicken fingers) out of school lunches. It’s even trying to ban KFC from advertising a new fried-chicken sandwich anywhere near schools, comparing it to cigarettes.

But cheeseburgers and chicken sandwiches aren’t addictive. And they don’t cause cancer (no matter how hard PCRM and its phony “Cancer Project” try to make you believe that  tall tale). Food standards on large-scale farms are actually easier to control than in smaller, “free-range” settings. Last year, researchers at Sweden's National Veterinary Institute found that free-roaming animals are more likely to be exposed to bacteria, parasites, and other nasties than livestock confined indoors.

Not that small, organic vegetable farmers have an unimpeachable record when it comes to food safety. The 2006 E. coli bacteria outbreak that killed three people and sickened hundreds more had its roots at a 50-acre organic spinach farm. Last year’s massive peanut recall included both conventional and organic nuts, and dozens of organic food items were not spared from being yanked from shelves.

The bottom line is this: The so-called “physicians committee” (which isn’t a committee of physicians to begin with) is incapable of being honest about food safety because doing so would compromise its vegan agenda. And if you don’t play the sport, you can’t be the referee.

The New York Daily News reported yesterday that People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), always on the lookout for a media stunt, delivered a letter to the U.S. Department of Agriculture demanding the government refuse to renew the exhibitor license of the Ringling Bros. circus. Looks like the media whiz-kids at PETA screwed this one up, though. The same newspaper reports today in a follow up article that the USDA already renewed Ringling’s permit—last week. Oops.

This attempted offensive strategy is just the latest from animal rights groups like PETA and the so-called “Humane Society” of the United States (HSUS) against the circus. Like most groups pursuing an animals-first, people-last ideology, they want to shut the circus down entirely and “liberate” the elephants. But do their campaigns deserve to be taken seriously?

Ringling notes that the USDA has already inspected its circus five times this year. So much for PETA’s accusation of animal “abuse.” And a cadre of animal rights groups including the Fund for Animals (now part of HSUS) pursued a federal lawsuit against the circus operator for almost a decade. How’d that turn out?

A federal judge dismissed the lawsuit in December, writing that the animal-rights plaintiffs had a collective pay-to-play arrangement with a key witness in the case. That witness’s testimony was so full of holes that the judge actually used the word “demolished” to describe his credibility. Now these circus-haters are facing a federal lawsuit for their scheme. And it was filed under the mobster-oriented Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) law.

Today, PETA is left calling for the USDA to revoke Ringling’s permit and wiping the egg-substitute off its face. Our guess is the USDA isn’t going to throw PETA a bone (or a peanut, for that matter). Maybe they—and the organized racket going after the circus—should just hang it up. Before they get trampled in the court of public opinion, that is.

New York Assemblywoman Barbara Clark (D-Queens) has introduced legislation, bill No. A10574, that would ban the sale of products containing high fructose corn syrup in restaurants and retail stores and forbid its use in the preparation of any food product sold or served in restaurants. If passed, the law would take effect immediately throughout the state. Violators could face a $2,000 fine or even a misdemeanor criminal charge.

Looks like someone bit too hard into a marketing gimmick and took it way, way off the deep end. It’s hard to tell which proposal is crazier—this, or the statewide salt ban proposed by another Assemblyman.

Why is this proposal so full of gooey thinking? Because high fructose corn syrup is simply a kind of sugar made from corn instead of beet or cane, like table sugar is. Corn sugar shares a nearly identical composition with table sugar. And both have the same number of calories.

It’s not rocket science. Sugar is sugar.

Even demonization maestro Michael Jacobson called out the high-fructose hype, telling USA Today last month that “there isn't a shred of evidence that high-fructose corn syrup is nutritionally any different from sugar.” No less than the originator of the theory that high fructose corn syrup was linked to obesity, University of North Carolina professor Barry Popkin, has done an about-face. Another food cop, noted New York University professor Marion Nestle, also agrees that high fructose corn syrup is “basically no different from table sugar.”

It’s hard to see what this ban would accomplish, besides creating an unnecessary stigma in the minds of New Yorkers. But it does show what’s wrong with the New York nanny state. “Public health” now means a paternalistic invasion of personal food choices. It comes in the form of bake sale bans, taxes on soft drinks, salt bans in restaurants, restaurant zoning bans, and now a ban on one kind of sugar.

What next? Maybe New York food dictators should just hurry up and get to the point by banning anything with sugar, salt, or fat. It’s a rather unpalatable idea.

The UK’s Daily Telegraph declares today that cows are “absolved” of causing global warming with nitrous oxide. This proclamation came after a study in the grasslands of Inner Mongolia found that grazing cattle can actually reduce emissions of the greenhouse gas. While the authors caution that the study shouldn’t be seen as necessarily applying to other areas of the world, its results add to last month’s work from UC-Davis researcher Frank Mitloehner. Mitloehner determined that livestock farming is responsible for a truly meager portion of America’s total greenhouse gas emissions, and that blaming animal agriculture for global warming isn’t supported by reality. His revelations have even caused United Nations researchers to retool their 2006 estimates of global greenhouse gas sources.

Despite the growing body of evidence to the contrary, some still are swayed by the notion that we need to “go veg” to save the planet. This week San Francisco supervisor Sophie Maxwell, herself a vegetarian, proposed a resolution to declare Mondays “Vegetarian Day” and “encourage” businesses and schools to offer veggie options. The measure passed unanimously, but as the San Jose Mercury News reports, even city residents are blowing it off as simply another ridiculous “only in San Francisco” gimmick:

To some in San Francisco, Meatless Monday is a welcome reminder of the small part that residents play in solving a larger problem. Others, however, were left asking for Supervisor-Free Fridays.

"It seems the supervisors would have better things to do—like deal with the budget," said resident Buzz Bense, 61, as he enjoyed a pork sandwich at Memphis Minnie's, a lower Haight barbecue joint. …

Glen Pritchard, about to dive into Minnie's pastrami special, said he cares about larger issues—the environment, animal welfare—but thinks the city's do-gooders can go too far. …

"People will talk about it for a month, then it'll go away," said Kegan Riley, 28, as she flipped hot dogs at the Rosamunde Sausage Grill.

Let’s hope the next hard-to-swallow idea out of San Francisco gets widely panned as well. Like a tax on soft drinks, for instance.

We’ve pointed out before that once the food police successfully tax one kind of food or beverage in the name of “fighting obesity,” taxes and other heavy-handed government regulations can spread to other foods and drinks like wildfire. Today, Journal News columnist Phil Reisman writes that instead of simply taxing an arbitrary product—soft drinks, in this example—the government should hurry up and get to the point:

Here's an idea. Instead of arbitrarily levying a tax on fat-inducing stuff people ingest like soda pop, tax the actual results.

In other words, don't play around. Force individuals to directly take responsibility for their behavior by enacting a real "obesity tax." Base it on the BMI — or body mass index….

To carry out the plan, citizens would be required by law to report every year to community weigh stations established by a brand new Federal Bureau of Obesity. Considering that 26 percent of adults are clinically obese, the tax would initially raise many billions of dollars in revenue, not to mention do wonders for liposuctionists.

But don’t grab your pitchforks and torches just yet. Reisman notes his satire, and goes on to suggest a real solution to fighting the Battle of the Bulge: “Radically revamp physical fitness programs in the public schools.”

Schools in Ohio just might do exactly that, as Buckeye legislators consider a bill that would require 30 minutes of daily exercise in school. It’s certainly a needed change—kids are getting less and less exercise in schools each year. A 2009 studyin the journal Pediatrics discovered that nearly a third of schoolchildren get little or no daily recess. And it’s certainly a more appetizing solution than the alternative of slowly taxing everything that might make us fat—from foods and drinks to couches and video game systems.

New York Health Commissioner Richard Daines is on an Empire State road show, promoting Governor David Paterson’s pet budget proposal: taxing sugary drinks. Last week, Daines and New York City’s head nanny Thomas Farley penned an op-ed about the supposed health benefits of a soft drink tax. But when the Syracuse Post-Standard described Daines’ pitch to New York legislators, a slightly different approach was emphasized:

Several state legislators, including Sen. Dave Valesky, D-Oneida, oppose the tax. But Daines said legislators have not come up with good alternatives to close the state’s budget gap. He said the Senate has been talking about closing the gap by collecting more revenue from cigarettes sales on Indian reservations or refinancing bonds the state got through a 1998 settlement with the tobacco industry.

“Those are pretty shaky revenue sources,” Daines said. … “Every bit of legitimate revenue we can bring in will reduce the amount of borrowing.”

The Post-Standard isn’t the only paper taking note of Daines’ budgetary talking point. On Sunday, a New York Times profile of Daines revealed one bureaucratic benefit to passing a sugary drink tax:

The state budget office estimates such a tax would raise $1 billion a year when fully in effect … an estimate based, Dr. Daines says, on industry price elasticity models. Earnings would go to stave off health services cuts…[Daines] is gambling that the tax proposal might be revived during 11th-hour budget negotiations, when lawmakers are desperate.

Gee, commissioner, is the tax really about fighting obesity? Or is funding health-care bureaucracy the real name of the game?

Not all New Yorkers are buying Daines’ assertion that a soft drink tax is for everybody’s well being. The Times interviewed one Queens supermarket owner who hit the nail on the head:

Mr. Eusebio, the tax opponent, recommended that Dr. Daines devote his time to promoting a “holistic diet” and educating young people about the benefits of exercise.

“Educating people helps them more than taxing them,” Mr. Eusebio said. “If taxation was a form of diet, New Yorkers would be the healthiest people on the planet because we are the most overtaxed people on the planet.”

You might recall how we reported in January that the charity watchdogs at the American Institute of Philanthropy (AIP) gave the animal-rights Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) a “C-minus” grade based on the organization’s inefficient use of funds. AIP recently released its new grades for March and April, and to no one’s surprise, HSUS still earns a C-minus (as does the Fund for Animals, which merged with HSUS in 2005). It’s no shocker because while less than one percent of HSUS’s funds go to pet shelters and HSUS has racked up atrocious fundraising records, the charity's executives have socked millions of dollars away in pension plans.

Last week a second nonprofit watchdog, Charity Navigator, caught the scent of the money trail at HSUS and downgraded its ranking of the animal rights group. Charity Navigator gave HSUS’s organizational efficiency just one star, reflecting its high fundraising costs that, in turn, result in less money being spent on actual programs. And HSUS’s international arm, Humane Society International, got just one star overall.

As we’re telling the media today:

Charity Navigator’s downgrading of the Humane Society of the United States and its international arm sends a clear message: Animal charities can’t stuff donor dollars away in pension plans, shortchange pet shelters, and expect that no one will notice.

HSUS raises tens of millions of dollars a year from Americans who believe their money is trickling down to local pet shelters. Instead, their contributions fund a bloated staff of well-paid lawyers and lobbyists, PETA-style propaganda campaigns, and a hefty executive pension plan.

Visit www.HumaneWatch.org for continuing coverage of all the news America’s largest animal rights group would rather hide from the well-meaning animal lovers whose doggie dollars make its world go ’round.

Michael Jacobson, food police chief at the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), announced today* that he wanted to make a public confession that he drank a soda.

“I know at CSPI we run a website calling soda ‘liquid candy,’ but I just couldn’t resist myself. I drank a can of root beer the other day,” Jacobson said, sniffing away tears*.

For his penance, Jacobson will flagellate himself* with a cat o' nine tails while reciting CSPI’s 1^st (and only) Commandment, “Thou Shalt Not Eat Or Drink Anything That Tastes Good.” Jacobson is considering* whether he needs to preemptively don a Hannibal Lecter-style mask to fight the temptation of cheese fries.

CSPI’s confessional* will be open every day at 8 a.m. before Easter.

*April Fools!

USA Today editorializes this morning that we’re “hooked on junk food,” citing the recent Scripps Research Institute study claiming that high-fat, high-sugar foods are—literally—addictive like crack cocaine. The newspaper also notes the work of former FDA Commissioner David Kessler, who thinks that food makers create irresistible—essentially, addictive—products.  Why is this important? The trend for changes in food hasn’t yet reached the same “critical mass” that anti-smoking efforts did, the paper notes, but making the link between food and addiction is a key component to generating the wide-ranging social attitude shift that Kessler and other anti-food activists want.

As we wrote on Monday, the concept that junk food is “addictive” like hard drugs has serious flaws and troubling implications. For one, Americans already have a name for the concept of wanting food: hunger. Foods people enjoy, like pizza, potato chips, or hamburgers, simply “taste good.” If we weren't “addicted” to food, we'd all starve to death. 

Further, the comparison of food to smoking is ludicrous to the point of discrediting those who advance such a comparison. For one, we need food to live, but we don’t need tobacco. And obesity is ultimately a matter of numbers—calories “in” and calories “out.” And so on. (The list is long.)

That said, we agree that there is a “critical mass” approaching, but the tipping point is the erosion of personal responsibility. Public health and anti-obesity activists reject the belief that individuals should have ultimate say in what they eat.

It’s an increasingly pervasive philosophy. But when has government bureaucracy created population-wide weight loss? After the government’s “anti-fat” national dietary guidelines, people ate more carbohydrates—and gained weight. Even unapologetic food cop Kelly Brownell admits that anti-obesity health campaigns have failed, telling National Journal writer Neil Munro last month, “People have been working for 40 years on treatments. None of these things have worked.” Munro also notes:

The XXXL-sized failure by government-funded public health professionals is demonstrated by the federal Healthy People 2010 education program, which in 2000 set a goal of reducing the obesity rate from 30 percent to 15 percent by this year. The rate has since stretched, however, to 33.8 percent of the adult population.

Why don’t we try a Plan B? Instead of listening to public health activists who think that more and more government control is the way to go, let’s tell them to take a hike. Some exercise would certainly be good for their health. And maybe we can shrink America’s waistlines without inflating the size of government.

We’re not going to wade into the general healthcare kerfuffle that’s dominating the news. But it’s worth noting that, since President Obama has signed the 2,000 page bill, menu labeling is now the law of the land. As we (and the Los Angeles Times) recounted last month, menu-labeling studies after the passage of New York City’s law have been, at best, a mixed bag of results. There’s no compelling evidence that labeling calorie counts and fat grams on restaurant menus and menu boards is having a positive effect on obesity.

So we have to ask: What if it doesn’t work?

To begin with, anti-obesity crusaders will start looking for the next (and the next, and the next) heavy-handed policy. If national menu labeling mandates can be passed under the name of “healthcare,” a whole lot of supposedly anti-obesity initiatives could see the light of legislation. The feds could even keep looking to the Big Apple for ideas, and start a nationwide gross-out advertising campaign against soft drinks.

And you can bet former New York City Health Commissioner (and current Centers for Disease Control and Prevention head) Thomas Frieden is already looking for ways to get his finger in the pie. For one, he’s called for a national soda tax. While that’s standard food-cop fare, the creative impulse of anti-obesity crusaders could bring us far more wacky policies.

Perhaps overweight people will be banned from eating out (or ordering anything but a salad). Kids might start receiving classroom grades based on their weight. (If they fail, off to fat camp they go!) You could owe the IRS an income tax and a flab tax. Salt and sugar shakers may be banned from restaurant tables. And cookies and hamburgers might be for “adults only”—if they’re not considered “controlled substances,” that is.

The possibilities are endless. Our take on “Soup Nazis” and restaurant weigh-ins is looking quite modest.

You’d think we’re exaggerating. But one scold at the Center for Science in the Public Interest recently called a proposal to ban toys in kids’ meals a “promising” policy.

When ideas that nutty get traction, what’s not on the table?

“Junk food could be addictive 'like heroin',” screams one news headline today above a story describing a new study in the journal Nature Neuroscience. Researchers at the Scripps Research Institute in Florida found that rats fed high-fat diets exhibited “addiction” symptoms, lost control, and overate. Get ready for the hyperbole.

Common use of the term “addiction” has changed from describing a physical dependence on a substance (like hard drugs), to a psychological dependence. That’s one reason comparing fried chicken and french fries to cocaine and heroin is pure exaggeration. Here’s how DrugFree.org explains withdrawal symptoms that heroin users frequently experience:

[Withdrawal] produces drug craving, restlessness, muscle and bone pain, insomnia, diarrhea and vomiting, cold flashes with goose bumps ("cold turkey"), kicking movements ("kicking the habit"), and other symptoms … Sudden withdrawal by heavily dependent users who are in poor health can be fatal.

Does going one day without a cookie or a slice of pizza give anyone the shakes? We're skeptical.

Food can certainly be “irresistible.” But it’s possible to have a psychological addiction to just about anything. A certain song. The cute guy or girl you see in class. Your Blackberry. The human mind works in mysterious ways.

Food is physically addictive in the general sense that you need to eat or you’ll die. But fulfilling hunger pangs is hardly a bad thing. It seems that delicious food would obviously be more appealing than food that tastes bland. Along those lines, Andrew Brown at London’s Daily Telegraph makes an interesting point:

It strikes me as a waste of time to study food to find some “addictive” property it may have, as if this offers an answer to compulsive use. Surely for any substance that’s pleasurable, there’s a person in the world who’ll take it compulsively. What are you going to do – ban all pleasurable substances? Or make them very expensive?

Maybe not ban, but certainly sue. Classifying certain food as “addictive” is a ploy already in use by some trial lawyers. The latest “addiction” study is eerily similar to newspaper headlines seven years ago. Back then, John “Sue the Bastards” Banzhaf saw food “addiction” as the necessary hook for “obesity lawsuits” to succeed in court. Prove that food companies make an addicting product, the logic goes, and a super-sized payday awaits.

We should note that the implications of this latest research hurts one class of people the greatest: Those trying to lose weight. They’re essentially being told that it’s a Sisyphean task with no chance of success. But let’s face some common sense: People have more self-control than rats.

Every day, more people are pointing out flaws in last month’s Princeton University study finding that rats fed high fructose corn syrup gained more weight than rats fed sucrose (table sugar). The authors of the research speculated that this could signify that high fructose corn syrup has a unique role in fueling America’s “obesity epidemic.” Earlier in the week, however, nutrition professor Marion Nestle detailed her confusion about how the researchers could have reached that conclusion. Today Washington Post health writer Jennifer LaRue Huget voices her skepticism with the Princeton study, writing that the evidence is “not convincing enough” to support the authors’ speculations.

We are also unconvinced, in large part because sucrose and high fructose corn syrup are nutritionally equivalent. A set of five papers published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition in December 2008 has already debunked the theory that high fructose corn syrup was uniquely responsible for the rise in obesity rates.

Even a Princeton scientist who worked on the project now says the results from the rats do not “immediately translate to humans.” That’s all well and good, but will the researchers stop with the pointless speculation? University of North Carolina professor Barry Popkin already tried that back in 2004, theorizing about a high fructose corn syrup-to-obesity link. It didn’t turn out so well.

Thankfully, Huget drops some common sense into the debate:

The bottom line: Drinks sweetened by sugar or [high fructose corn syrup] contain calories, and consuming too many calories can make you fat.

Lab rats don't get to choose what they eat and drink. But people do.

Yesterday the New York Daily News reported that New York City Council Speaker Christine Quinn wants to impose zoning bans on fast-food restaurants to supposedly “help” poor areas by blacklisting establishments that offer cheap food. If that sounds familiar, you might remember that the Los Angeles City Council tried something similar with “health zoning” in 2008 in South L.A. Just one problem: A RAND Corporation study last November found that its fast-food zoning ban was based on questionable premises. Wealthier areas of town had a higher concentration of fast-food restaurants than the poorer sections of Los Angeles, yet were not subject to any zoning ban. The actual data, the study says, disagreed with "media reports about an over-concentration of fast-food establishments" in South Los Angeles. 

While the same may or may not be true in the NYC, there is certainly separate research showing that Quinn’s proposal may not have any effect on obesity. As we’re telling the media:

A 2009 Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) study undercuts the basis for Quinn’s draconian fast food zoning proposal. Looking at data for 60,000 children over 11 years, the study found that living in vicinity of fast-food restaurants had little to no effect on children's weight….Not surprisingly, the IUPUI study also found that living near certain recreational amenities, such as a soccer field or tennis court, lowers a child’s body mass index.

The single-minded belief of Quinn and other city officials that child obesity is only caused by ‘calories in’ completely disregards scientific research which has shown time and again that the solution for childhood obesity is much more complex than any single feel-good policy can solve.

If Quinn gets her way, who knows—maybe the Big Apple will find itself devoid of New York-style pizzerias.

We were surprised on Monday to read that researchers found that rats fed high fructose corn syrup experienced more weight gain than rats fed table sugar. It raised some red flags because sucrose and high fructose corn syrup are handled the same metabolically and contain the same number of calories per teaspoon. And a set of five papers published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition has already debunked the theory that high fructose corn syrup was uniquely responsible for the rise in obesity rates in America.

And now, Marion Nestle has shed some perspective and analysis on this research. Writing on her blog, Nestle says she’s confused about how the Princeton researchers even came to their conclusion that high fructose corn syrup causes more weight gain than sucrose:

It has long been known that feeding sugars to rats makes them eat more and gain weight.  But, as summarized in Table 1 in the paper, the researchers did only two experiments that actually compared the effects of HFCS to sucrose on weight gain, and these gave inconsistent results.  Their other experiments compared HFCS to chow alone. […]

Although the authors say calorie intake was the same, they do not report calories consumed nor do they discuss how they determined that calorie intake was the same.  This is an important oversight because measuring the caloric intake of lab rats is notoriously difficult to do (they are messy).

The only question left is: Why do the mainstream media continue to give credence to the supposed "debate" about high fructose corn syrup? The debate was over long ago. The only people continuing to stir the pot on high fructose corn syrup are from a handful of companies that market their products as being made of "pure cane sugar" or being "HFCS free"—both of which con consumers into thinking that the products are healthier or more natural (they're not). Of course, the real reason is simple: These companies are looking for anything that will boost their sales in an economic downturn.

Nestle concludes:

So does HFCS make rats fat?  Sure if you feed them too many calories altogether. Sucrose will do that, too. 

Hear that? Calories are still calories. And sugar is still sugar. Thanks, Marion. You’re absolutely right.

Yesterday, we reported that University of California-Davis researcher Dr. Frank Mitloehner has documented a major flaw in a 2006 United Nations report about greenhouse gas emissions from livestock producers. Mitloehner found that the U.N.'s analysis of global transportation emissions was not as detailed as its review of meat production, creating an apples-to-oranges comparison. We felt yesterday’s news deserved a big audience, so we circulated a statement to the media. Today, the BBC reports that the U.N. has taken notice. One of the authors of the 2006 “Livestock’s Long Shadow” report now admits that its estimates unfavorably comparing emissions from livestock farms with those from transportation—a favorite talking point of anti-meat activists—are indeed unrealistic and unfair:

Pierre Gerber, a policy officer with the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization, told the BBC he accepted Dr Mitloehner's criticism.

"I must say honestly that he has a point – we factored in everything for meat emissions, and we didn't do the same thing with transport," he said.

This is enormous news, and we’ll look forward to reading the U.N.’s retracted-and-revised global estimates. In the meantime, we’ll keep spreading the word that the EPA’s domestic inventory shows the U.S. livestock industry accounts for less than 3 percent of total emissions. Perhaps one day the anti-meat activists at PETA and HSUS will get the memo: We should be applauding eco-friendly American livestock farmers, not attacking them.

With the announcement this week that Quebec will soon begin promoting “Meatless Mondays,” anti-meat activism got a significant boost. As usual, news stories about the campaign cited sketchy figures from a 2006 United Nations report claiming that livestock producers are responsible for 18 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. But these pendulums tend to swing back toward sanity eventually. Reporters today are covering new research from University of California-Davis expert Dr. Frank Mitloehner. His message: It’s time to clear the air about meat and global warming.

Mitloehner’s new research shows that while the U.N.’s report shows animal agriculture contributing 18 percent of greenhouse gases (GHGs), here in the U.S. the Environmental Protection Agency’s domestic inventory shows all agriculture contributes 5.8 percent of GHGs. (And California is even lower than that average, with a 2005 state inventory finding the ag sector contributes just 5.4 percent of total GHGs.) As for the veggie-activist claim that livestock farmers are sowing climate doom, the EPA found that the livestock portion of the pie accounts for less than 3 percent of domestic emissions.

And the U.N.’s report did not make a compelling analysis, says Mitloehner, who calls it “a classical apples-and-oranges analogy that truly confused the issue.” While it provided a detailed farm-to-fork analysis of livestock-related emissions, the U.N.’s analysis of transportation sources was nowhere near as thorough. This likely led to an overstatement of agriculture’s impact on the climate.

So what’s a better solution than calling for widespread tofu conversion? The answer: Helping underdeveloped countries to become more energy-efficient with their livestock production. This is especially important considering that global demand for meat is expected to double by 2050. (Sorry, PETA and HSUS.)

How efficient are U.S. livestock producers? As Mitloehner details elsewhere, America’s beef production in 2008 needed 37 million fewer cattle to produce the same amount of meat as in 1975. This increase in efficiency (more meat per head of cattle) has led to less waste and required less feed. And a 2007 study published in the Journal of Animal Sciences found that modern dairy producers require significantly fewer resources than their counterparts six decades ago.

There’s little doubt that the anti-meat Humane Society of the United States, the “Supreme Master” Ching Hai, Paul McCartney, and other vegetarian activists will keep pushing their “go veg” climate campaigns. But if they really care about global warming, they’d do more good by policing the supermarket for “Made in the USA” labels.

Hunters and pet store owners are firing back against People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) and its radical agenda. In South Carolina, hunters are supporting a statewide ballot initiative to change the state Constitution and give hunters a permanent right to hunt. Says hunting enthusiast James Kennamer, “It will keep local entities from passing legislation that would stop us from having a place to go hunt.”

Not surprisingly, PETA is the main opposition to the initiative. One PETA spokesman says: “PETA as an organization exists to remind people that there’s really no difference in abusing cats and dogs to abusing deer and fish.”

Too bad PETA doesn’t practice what it preaches. In 2009, PETA killed 2,301 dogs and cats according to its own “Animal Record” filings with the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services. That’s 97 percent of all the pets that were in PETA’s care. PETA’s leaders schedule these pets for death because they would rather spend their $33 million annual budget on media and public relations stunts instead of operating an adoption shelter. Since 1998, a total of 23,640 pets have met their makers at the end of a PETA syringe.

In protesting the South Carolina initiative, PETA claims it would open the “flood gates” to longer hunting seasons, larger bag counts, and existing age limits. Kennamer calls that ridiculous because hunters have a vested interest in small bag counts and age limits. Fortunately, PETA may be fighting an uphill battle in South Carolina. In the last 15 years, nine states have passed “right to hunt” measures.

In Hollywood, Florida, owners of a pet store organized a counter protest against animal rights demonstrators who accused the store of buying its animals from so-called “puppy mills” (the latest pejorative for commercial dog breeders). Although the animal rights activists were not affiliated with PETA, the counter demonstrators directed their anger at PETA, citing in particular the hypocrisy of PETA killing animals it claims to love. “They’ve killed 14,000 dogs,” pointedly notes Theresa Miller, office manager of the Puppy Palace store. “Michael Vick only killed eight.” Sounds like something we’ve been saying.

As revenue-starved politicians everywhere seek new ways to collect every last available nickel and dime, more and more are turning to soft drink taxes. It’s almost a sort of whack-a-mole game, with a new state or locality creating a new proposal seemingly every week. Fortunately, they’ve met strong resistance at nearly every turn, sparking protests in New York and Kansas. And as Rasmussen Reports declares this morning, 56 percent of Americans reject taxes on soft drinks. Today, we’re adding our own thoughts to the debate in Kansas, as we talk to Wichita Eagle about how taxes on sugary drinks don't improve anyone's health:

There's no convincing evidence that "fat taxes" on food or drinks are an effective way to force weight loss. Writing in the Review of Agricultural Economics, a team of researchers determined that a small tax on snacks "would have very small dietary impacts." As for a larger tax, it "would not appreciably affect" the average person's diet.

Moreover, taxing soft drinks may even be counterproductive in reducing the number of calories people consume through what they drink. Researchers writing in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine noted that taxing soft drinks may result in people simply substituting other beverages that are still high in calories but remain affordable. For example, orange juice and 2 percent milk —which would not be taxed under Vratil's plan — contain more calories per ounce than cola. If the Vratil tax really worked, it could cause an increase in consumption of these other beverages, resulting in people consuming more calories than before.

Read the whole piece here.