Proving once again PETA is unfamiliar with how to a deliver meaningful publicity campaign, the animal rights group is now looking to score a win off poor people’s thirst.
Some background: The bankrupt city of Detroit has been shutting off its tap water to thousands of poor residents in order to force them to pay for nearly $90 million in overdue water bills. Advocates have slammed the move, calling out the city for eliminating a basic human right. The NAACP recently filed a lawsuit calling the shut down discriminatory, as most of Detroit’s low-income residents are overwhelmingly black.
It takes a certain type of callousness to look at this situation and see anything other than misfortune. PETA saw an opportunity! The animal rights group has made an offer to poor Detroit residents: Be one of 10 families to denounce meat and they’ll put an end to your family’s thirst. PETA will even throw in a basket of vegetables for the effort.
“Vegan meals take far less of a toll on the Earth’s resources,” PETA wrote in a recent press release. “It takes about 2,500 gallons of water to produce just a pound of meat but only about 155 gallons of water to produce a pound of wheat.”
This seems like as good a time as any to look back on PETA’s misguided and often times exploitative PR campaigns of the past:
1. “Boyfriend went vegan and knocked the bottom out of me.” (2012)
Enhance your sex life by encouraging your boyfriend to go vegan. He’ll transform into a “tantric porn star,” breaking your neck and causing your body to go limp. The sex will be so mind-blowing, in fact, you’ll wander aimlessly in just a bra, as you reflect on the violent sex you had the pleasure of subjecting yourself to the evening prior.
2. “Holocaust on your plate.” (2003)
Here the group matches photos of factory farms with Holocaust inmates. The display was promptly banned in Germany—a move PETA found absurd considering a Jewish PETA member happened to fund the campaign.
3. Too fat for Plan B? Try “Plan V.” (2013)
Jumping on news Plan B may not work as well for women over 165 pounds, PETA urges women to shed a few pounds by going vegan.
4. Dog breeding is for Nazis. (2014)
Again conjuring up the atrocities of the Holocaust, which lets keep in mind systematically killed 11 million people, the group equates dog breeding to Hitler’s plan to bring about a pure Aryan race.
5. Don a fur coat and you’ll be beaten. (2007)
The disturbing video above even seems to justify senseless violence.
Detroit has already severed off the tap water supply to nearly 125,000 people, with thousands more likely to have their resources shut down in weeks to come. And anyone with a remote interest in current events understands most Detroiters are low-income residents, many of whom could not afford to have a vegan diet.
Nice going, PETA.
