Doctors of Animal-Rights-ology

It appears that the misnamed Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) is now in the book-review business. PCRM has issued a list of ten popular celebrity cookbooks, along with its rating of how many recipes in each book were “healthful.”

Of course, PCRM is no ordinary “physicians” group — it’s a front for PETA and other animal rights organizations — so their definition of “healthful” excludes anything containing beef, chicken, pork, fish, or dairy.

The only offering to score about a 50 percent rating on PCRM’s scale is Marilu Henner’s cookbook, which PCRM praises for its “dairy-free” recipes and “vegan chili.” Meanwhile, PCRM lashes out at Wolfgang Puck for daring to cook “bacon-wrapped meat loaf,” slams Martha Stewart’s steak salads and pork chops, and suggests that the “meat-heavy diet” promoted by The Sopranos Family Cookbook is “bound to do them in.”

This is just the latest in a long line of PCRM’s phony-baloney animal rights messages, each masquerading as legitimate health advice. PCRM issued an Internet release last week, touting the vegan-friendly falsehood that eating fish would “raise [their] heart attack risk” — despite widespread media coverage highlighting the lack of a scientific consensus on the subject. While PCRM cited one study that found a health risk from mercury-laden fish, another study published in the same issue of the New England Journal of Medicine found absolutely no connection.

To date, PCRM has received over $1.3 million from PETA and other animal rights groups to promote their extreme dietary agenda. Even the animal rights industry’s own watchdogs know what the group is up to: last year Animal People News declared that PETA and PCRM are so closely associated that they should be considered “a single fundraising unit.”