PETAs Unhappy Target: Mickey D's

PETA is an organization of passionate people who support humane treatment for all animals, but especially those that are raised as a food source. The organization has documented extensive cruelty to what can only be called disposal animals in the breeding, force-feeding, and often cruel and unusual methods of death for animals bred as a food source. PETA's concerns are appropriate and should be addressed by the food industry, which seems loathe to do so.

Making our children responsible for the actions of those who commit the atrocities against animals is particularly abhorrent. The new Unhappy Meal campaign targets children and puts the burden of cleaning up the industry on their shoulders. Children are not the perpetrators of the way the chickens raised for Mc Nuggets are bred, fed, and slaughtered: they are simply innocent consumers. While the organizational management team of McDonald's can both understand and effect change, the youngest consumers cannot, so why has PETA targeted the children to clean up the slaughterhouses?

Children receive visual stimuli that lasts a lifetime, especially when they have no context for making meaning of what they see. Opening an Unhappy Meal and finding what appears to be blood smeared on the food wrapper traumatizes a child: it does not call that child to take action against the corporation who sells the food product. Receiving a t-shirt with a bloody graphic and message that most children cannot read does nothing to further PETA's goals, but it does alienate the parent who has to explain the graphic and read the logo.

I cannot imagine that any PETA parent actually thinks the current publicity campaign against McDonald's is not just a good idea, but the best idea they've had in years. My children are grown and I am still angered by the tactic of targeting children as responsible for adult decision-making. My reaction is not to avoid McDonald's and Happy Meals, but to protest PETA's mission, even if it means buying myself a Happy Meal!