Martin Wilter’s letter about the National School Lunch Program sounded familiar to me — probably because the exact same letter has run in 35 other U.S. daily newspapers, all under different names.
[“Schools need to step in on nutrition,” January 26, 2010] It appears Morning News is the victim of an “Astroturf” campaign promoting the image of grassroots concern about making school lunches vegetarian.
Most of these carbon-copy letters included links to Web sites. One of these is run by an animal rights group deceptively named the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM).
PCRM is not a mainstream health group (though it acts like one). About 60 percent of the group’s budget comes from the Animal Rights Foundation of Florida. PCRM’s president writes that cheese is “dairy crack” and that “to give a child animal products is a form of child abuse.” Policymakers, his organization says, “should think of drinking milk the same way we think of smoking cigars.” These are not the values that most parents want to see reflected in school cafeterias.
Newspapers should be extra vigilant in the future, to make sure they’re not being duped by a tiny vegetarian movement that appears larger than it really is.
David Martosko
Director of Research, Center for Consumer Freedom, Martosko@Consumerfreedom.com
Washington, D.C.
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