Vegan Group Uses Children To Push Agenda

I'm absolutely sickened and disheartened by the recent actions of the Physician's Committee For Responsible Medicine (PCRM). This pro-vegan group is taking advantage of an eight-year old girl named Jasmine Messiah to push forward their agenda. As printed in my local newspaper, The Daily Republic, in the Kids News section, "Enthusiastic vegetarian Jasmine Messiah is now the real-life poster child of a campaign aimed at persuading Congress to require schools across the country to offer students more fruits, vegetables and vegan meals. Posters bearing the girl's beaming face went up recently at the Union Station Amtrak near the Capitol in Washington, D.C., as part of a campaign by the PCRM. The group spent $20,000 on the 15 posters; they'll stay up for a month as part of an effort to influence Congress as it reauthorizes the Child Nutrition Act."

Not familiar with PCRM? Let me assure you that this organization is definitely not made up of a group of doctors. According to Activist Cash, a website that tracks the spending of animal rights activists, "PCRM is a wolf in sheep’s clothing. PCRM is a fanatical animal rights group that seeks to remove eggs, milk, meat, and seafood from the American diet. Despite its operational and financial ties to other animal activist groups, PCRM has successfully duped the media and much of the general public into believing that its pronouncements about the superiority of vegetarian-only diets represent the opinion of the medical community. The reality is that less than 5 percent of PCRM’s members are physicians, (as reported by Newsweek in 2004)."

More than taking advantage of a child to push forward a pro-vegan agenda, it's incredibly sad that animal rights activists and parents actually believe that a vegetarian lifestyle is healthier for growing children. According to latest data, four million U.S. children are iron-deficient today, and childhood iron-deficiency anemia is associated with behavioral and cognitive delays. Beef is a good source of iron, and unlike plant proteins, beef is the food supply’s most readily available and easily absorbed source of iron. Iron not only helps red blood cells carry oxygen to body tissue, it also plays an important role in cognitive health, including memory, ability to learn and reasoning (all important for children's success in school, of course). For more information on how beef can play an important role in kids' health, link here.