Schonfeld vs Newkirk

Victor Schonfeld writes in the Guardian:

five fatal flaws of animal activism:

1. Instead of promoting animal rights goals as a major plank within broader social change movements, animal organisations insist on going it alone. Yet the Green party's animal rights goals are as radical as any animal rights organisation's.

2. One of the world's largest animal rights organisations routinely employs naked young women, including porn stars, to chase mass media attention. Would a human rights organisation stoop so low?

3. Animal rights organisations have been handing out awards and lavishing praise on slaughterhouse designers and burger restaurant chains after "negotiations" for small changes that leave the systems of exploitation intact.

4. Instead of animal rights organisations promoting a clear "moral baseline" that individuals should become vegans to curb their own demands for animal exploitation, groups have given their stamp of approval to deeply compromised marketing concepts such as "happy meat", "freedom foods", "sustainable meat", and "conscientious omnivores".

5. Tactics of violence and personal intimidation have at long last fallen out of favour, but activists now pour energy and resources into organisations that lack any real strategy for bringing an end to animal exploitation, whether for food or science.

Number 1, just aint so. Attempts to put animal rights or even welfare on the platforms of political parties has been tried exhaustively, with very few successes, fox hunting in the UK being the only one I can think of, and that after 150 years of trying. Linking animal rights to other rights movements is also problematic, only because other rights groups do not want to associate their movement with ours.

Number 2, intrigues me, why exactly is it stooping low? I completely disagree.
To me human rights organisations peddle images far lower than anything PETA has ever done. Those organisations images are designed to elicit money or support by illuminating and publicly degrading the most vulnerable people for their organisations benefit. Let us not forget these organisations exist on funds generated by public appeals designed to make money from misery. The images of poor, homeless, starving, tortured, frightened, scarred people that grace the publicity materials of human aid and human rights groups are far more low. They project suffering as virtue, and seek your money from shame and guilt. Is this not the lowest. To me it is far lower than pandering to sex.
The image of a semi-nude semi-celebrity (or porn star) asking you not to wear fur, or to spey your pet for PETA is in no way worse than the pornography of want displayed by human centred organisations.
I would question also the morality that thinks it is not acceptable to use Sasha Grey (the porn star Schonfeld takes exception to) in an advert as opposed to any other professional or 'celebrity' as though porn stars were somehow less worthy of consideration as human beings.

Numbers 3&4, all animal rights groups are clear on their final demands, including PETA, which are a complete end to all animal exploitation for food, clothing and other unnecessary ends. Getting there is the thing, some organisations believe incremental steps are the way to go. See Newkirk's response citing Peter Singer's utilitarian stance linked below.
Also actually there are few or no animal rights organisations that do promote the 'happy meat' concept, the organisations that do support this are animal welfare groups, which are a completely different thing. Animal welfare groups do not even promote vegetarianism, and as such may not be the enemy but are also not part of the solution.

Number 5, well what strategy is being offered here. The 'by any means necessary' camp of animal liberationists have indeed stopped activity. Let us never pretend however that animal rights were not significantly advanced in the scientific, cosmetic and clothing industries by the actions of dedicated liberationists prepared to risk very long periods of imprisonment for their actions.



The PETA image of the multi-talented Sasha Grey, that Schonfeld objects to.

If you look at me and you think, here’s a woman who’s intelligent, cognizant and making her own choices, and you still tell me that what I’m doing is wrong, screw you, because that should end the debate.

Sasha Grey in Rolling Stone magazine


Ingrid Newkirk writing in response in the Guardian defends the use of whatever works:

As for the sexy women in our ads, the silly costumes, the street tableaux and the tofu sandwich give-aways, in a world where people want to smile, can't resist looking at an attractive image and are up for a free meal, if such harmless antics will allow one individual to reconsider their own role in exploiting animals, how can it be faulted? Yes, Peta could restrict its activities to scientific work, but how often do you read of that in the papers? It could just hand out lengthy tracts about ethics, but how many people would stop and take one, let alone read it? Any peaceful action that opens eyes, hearts and minds should be commended, not condemned.

P.S.

Wow, also, but what is most amazing about this newspaper exchange is the comments on the website. Over 90% are rabidly anti-vegetarian and anti-animals in general, with no insight at all on the issues. I have previously had it drawn to my attention that the Guardian’s Comment is Free section commentators are taken solely from the angry and the insane, and if you look at any comment area where the discussion is Israel you will see what I mean.


P.P.S.

I lived in the same apartment as Schonfeld for a time whilst he was working on The Animals Film, he played the album Remain in Light by the Talking Heads almost constantly, literally, just saying..

Howl

A new film on Allen Ginsberg's Howl is coming out soon.

By the looks of the trailers, James Franco remarkably has the mannerism and very much the voice of Ginsberg down pat. He does not look much the part, but then he isn't Ginsberg, and Ginsberg was a pretty unattractive man, truth be told.




Unfortunately the film seems to centre on the obscenity trial over the poem and as such will be of less interest than might be expected. There are numerous court room dramas over censorship or similar, Scopes, Chatterley etc. etc. and as such the debate over art/censorship is already covered enough for me in this medium. That debate though rages on still, in NSW it is being rehashed again at the moment, wherein the government is ruling out artistic merit as a defence against pornography laws.

The beats have been featured in a number of films, Robert Frank's short film Pull My Daisy being the epitome. There have also been David Cronenberg's frequent filmic use of the ideas of Burroughs, including his actual Naked Lunch. But there has been no film that centre stages the time/events around Times square when Ginsberg, Cassidy, Kerouac, Huncke and Burroughs first coalesced as a 'movement'. There would be no shortage of source material on this period, as there are numerous references to this period in the works of those concerned and many peripheral players. Notably one of which would be John Clellon Holmes, whose book 'Go' was the first so called 'beat' work published and although, not written with anything like the style of Kerouac, would be easily adaptable as a film script.

Howl, the original poem obviously also tells or alludes to many adventures/stories of the main beat protagonists (and Carl Solomon) in New York, across America and even on to Tangier. It would be possible and interesting to compose a film from the poem, rather than a film about the poem. If a film could be made from the 12 lines of Where the Wild Things Are, surely a film could be made from this.





Within Howl there are the lines:
who cooked rotten animals lung heart feet tail borsht
and tortillas dreaming of the pure vegetable kingdom

Which brings me to the subject of Ginsberg's supposed vegetarianism. It has been stated in numerous places that he was a vegetarian. This is in fact not the case and he ate meat in much the same way as all other Buddhists. The standard Buddhist belief (as given by Gautama himself) is that it is alright for adherents to eat meat as long as they have no reason to believe that the animal in question was slaughtered specifically for them. 2500 years ago, before the advent of the animal factories we know today, this was an acceptable compromise, in that individual animals were not killed especially for them when they were visiting people’s houses or in restaurants, so that even if they ate meat no blood as it were was on their hands. This stricture also allowed Buddhists who frequently in the past relied upon alms for their diet to receive and eat whatever food was offered. An alms receiver, after all, cannot be too picky about what is offered them. Today, however where there is no possible correlation between any individual non-human killed in an abattoir that kills maybe 50,000 a day and any one human individual, Buddhists therefore have a supreme get out clause that can allow them to eat almost all meat or fish. As with all religions that originally proscribed meat-eating on particular days or periods whether Christians, Jews, Mormons, etc., whatever means to defy the proscriptions will be made by adherents and leaders to continue to allow them to eat meat. Though of course this applies to all the tenets of all the faiths, for if people actually did follow all the sanctions and duties of each religion, they would be compelled to live in caves.

But back to Ginsberg, he clearly had a view towards vegetarianism, but like most people apparently he couldn’t bring himself to live up to it. He would have liked to have adopted the ‘pure diet’ a term he would be familiar with from studying his beloved William Blake, but choice and circumstance has him eating rotten meat.

When planning your Australia Day, keep this in mind

Also if in Sydney:

Australia Day Vegetarian BBQ
VENUE Bondi Surf Life Saving Club
26 January 2010, 11am - 4pm

Join us and Fry’s Vegetarian for the great Australian vegetarian BBQ.

Enjoy your freshly baked, preservative free bread thanks to Bakers Delight and Frys vegetarian food, manufacturer of vegetarian meat alternatives. All this for a gold coin donation to raise money for the Bondi Surf Life Saving Club.

There will be heaps happening on the day including a huge area with sun lounges, umbrellas and chairs and tables for people to relax and enjoy the BBQ. Key celebrities are also expected!

A vegan sausage stall was held last Sunday at a suburban Bunnings (hardware superstore) here in Canberra.

People were eating sausages, irrespective of whether they were vegetarian or not.

New IVU advert - Vegetables are all your body needs

vegetarian man - has carrots


vegetarian woman - has no carrots

Summertime by J.M. Coetzee - a review, sort of

Coetzee’s first autobiographical work Childhood: scenes from a provincial life (1997) covered his early years as a child in rural South Africa. The second work Youth (2002), his first unhappy adult years in England.

Coetzee’s third fictionalised autobiography Summertime: scenes from provincial life (2009) covers his life between 1972 and 1977, it spans an interesting part of his life, the period when he begins to be published but before his fame or renown develops. Here Coetzee is back living with his father, a 31 year old, somewhat of a failed migrant/exile. There is a gap between Youth and Summertime, that is not addressed, this is the period in the US, in which he married and fathered two children. It is clear that Coetzee, known as an intensely private man, does not want, for the sake of his family or himself, to expose that part of his life to scrutiny.

The return to South Africa, at a time when the civil war was ongoing and due to escalate, allows him to re-enter a culture and society at the end point of a four hundred year experiment. For Coetzee the return to his homeland appears to have given him the freedom to re-appraise his life, he has always written, but now he is to become a writer. It is also the point at which he makes his move towards vegetarianism, a development into action of his growing moral outlook. He cannot take part in the political and military war going on around him, but by altering his eating habits he could at least stop some killing.

As he states in his standard third person form, from this time:

“His life project was to be gentle. Let me start again. In Dusklands you must recall how much killing there is – killing not only of human beings but of animals. Well, at about the time the book appeared, John announced to me he was becoming a vegetarian. I don’t know how long he persisted in it, but I interpreted the vegetarian move as part of a larger project of self-reformation. He had decided he was going to block cruel and violent impulses in every arena of his life – including his love life, I might say – and channel them into his writing, which as a consequence was going to become a sort of unending cathartic exercise.” (p.58-59)

Coetzee was making these personal changes, after moving back into South African society which would seemingly be a much greater challenge than if he had attempted this in either of his previous homes in Britain or the United States. Coetzee moved into the same home as his father, an Anglophile Boer maybe, but still a Boer. Boer society then as now is very much a meat eating one, in which sharing braaied Boerewors is the single most iconic activity. The eating of meat, the hunting of and casual cruelty to animals is still to this day a defining aspect of Boer culture. According to the text of Summertime, Coetzee’s initial diet with his father continued to be the norm of meat and potatoes. Later, once he has decided to become vegetarian, he is initially timid about the diet, at a first family gathering after his decision he refuses the meat option, in favour of the vegetables But does not declare his hand, saying ‘not tonight’, rather than not ever when offered meat.
It is only later that he becomes defined or defines himself as a vegetarian. This may not be too radical a step for many, but for Coetzee, who never chooses to be identified with any opinion or ‘side’ this is a major step.

Like many people who become, rather than are born vegetarian, there is an episode in childhood when the death of an animal brings the fate of animals into light. With Coetzee there is an episode highlighted where when a six year old he pulled the leg off a locust, before leaving it to its fate.

‘Do you remember’, she says, ‘how once you pulled the leg off a locust and left me to kill it? I was so cross with you.’
‘I remember it every day of my life, 'he says. ‘Every day I ask the poor thing’s forgiveness. I was just a child, I say to it, just an ignorant child who did not know better. Kaggen, I say, forgive me’
‘Kaggen?’
‘Kaggen. The name of mantis, the mantis god. But the locust will understand. In the afterworld there are no language problems. It’s like Eden all over again’. (p. 96)

That this episode has resonance for Coetzee and to his mindset is clear as he still finds it necessary to repeat and by writing atone for the crime. Writing clearly for Coetzee remains the cathartic exercise in 2009, as it was in 1974. There are in vegetarian literature a thousand reasons given in personal testimonies as to what first made people become vegetarians, including, the unexpected sight of slaughter, a connection made and with an animal later severed by slaughter, or even just the sudden satori of seeing through the absent referent that an animal lived and died for the thing on your fork. Coetzee is too much an ethicist to have been swayed by this incident alone, after all he had a whole childhood in South Africa to see violence and killing.

Coetzee in all his novels deals with violence, power and morality but he rarely or never wrote specifically on vegetarianism from his change of diet in the mid 1970s up until the publication of The Lives of Animals (1999) and the subsequently linked fictive work Elizabeth Costello (2003). He has in recent years in Australia lent his name to some animal welfare/rights groups (such as Voiceless), but he could in no way be seen or taken for an animal activist.

Coetzee writes of moral choices and the implications of acting immorally (it is gainsaid that meat eating is immoral) but he is talking about himself, there is no sense here of advocacy. The closest that Coetzee has got to advocacy is in the words given to his female character Elizabeth Costello, the aged vegetarian writer. In the eponymous novel, Costello (Coetzee) gives haltingly delivered lectures on animals that are obfuscated by fictionalised elements and attacked and derided by members of her own family. Coetzee foresees how easily taking a stand can lead to misunderstanding, animosity and derision.

Partly his failure to ‘engage’ is seemingly due to the same reason he does not publicly speak on other issues. He is not and cannot be a public intellectual, presenting his opinions via the spoken media. Coetzee has much to say but will not participate in what he sees as a political dialogue. His ideas which are complex, individual and emotionally based are only capable of being delivered by his fiction. But his fiction is powerfully resonant, As the Swedish academy who presented Coetzee with the Nobel Prize for literature in 2003 said "With intellectual honesty and density of feeling, in a prose of icy precision, you have unveiled the masks of our civilization and uncovered the topography of evil."

But it is not just his ideas that are delivered by fiction. Summertime, his autobiography is also fictionalised. Coetzee only speaks even about himself in fiction. He rarely gives public lectures and never press interviews, even when accepting his Nobel Prize rather than making a speech, as previous winners have done, he instead spoke only in so much as he read aloud a piece of fiction. Coetzee will not speak to us directly, saying I believe this, or I felt this. Summertime too relies upon fictionalised interviews with past loves, a colleague and a cousin, allowing these fictionalised interviews to intercede and to allow for the removal of Coetzee. Once he has removed himself he can be devastatingly harsh in his self criticism, notably in the reminiscences of former lovers. He even evinces some guilt for his inability to act, rather than just write, as in the sections that deal with a Portuguese dancer with whom Coetzee says he was in love. She, Coetzee writes, despised him, as a man of inaction, which he later understands was because he continued to send only love letters to her, whilst what she really needed was practical and physical help as an immigrant in a strange unwelcoming land.

Given this propensity to detach himself from the frame or to speak in allegory, it seems unfair to expect Coetzee to be a spoken ambassador for anything.
Of course, Coetzee, being a very private man, who doesn’t do media interviews, is not well known and is not what we would call a celebrity writer. He is of course an acclaimed writer, multiple award winner, and read and taught throughout the world, but he remains resolutely not a public figure. As such his use to the vegetarian movement would be limited, he is not able to forefront a public campaign, and would be unknown to the majority of the public if he did. It is not for no reason that the successful publicity campaigns used by PETA use only the most media friendly young ‘celebrities’ .

But even if presented with a public platform and the ability to deliver the spoken words, what would Coetzee call for. He has no political platform, he finds political speak offensive and has no defined set of beliefs that can be easily encapsulated. He himself recognises this political naiveté, when giving a character an opinion on what Coetzee believes (in 1970s South Africa) he writes:

“The closing down of the mines. The ploughing under of the vineyards. The disbanding of the armed forces. The abolition of the automobile. Universal vegetarianism. Poetry in the streets. That sort of thing.” (p.230)

All of the above are quite possible for individuals to personally achieve by not participating in things which do harm, and conversely by supporting that which does good. Though none clearly are political practicable. For Coetzee this is irrelevant as he is someone who chooses to stand outside of the entire political process, not being naïve enough to believe that supporting one side over another in any political system will bring about a lasting change in policy or behaviour. Coetzee speaks to individuals through his works, that is his role - as a moral force.
Coetzee could see and acknowledge that the Apartheid system in South Africa was wrong but did not convince or engage actively in its opposition. He wrote about it, but did not take sides. And even after the ‘liberation’ of South Africa he remained outside of the government and its processes. For instance his novel Disgrace (1999), about the aftermath of the end of Apartheid and an allegory on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission was not seen as helpful by the ANC. The ANC for him were always just another set of different actors in a war, also engaged in attaining power through violence and politics. Given this ability to see that replacing one set of oppressors with another does not lead to manifestly better outcomes, he remained essentially and sensibly silent.

Coetzee then does not take part in the human political process, but with animals there is not a political process that can lead to their ‘winning’ and thus lead to their systematic oppression of any ‘losers’. In Coetzee’s moral universe there can only be winners when there is no longer any violence perpetrated by any thing or anyone. Vegetarianism then is a cause which Coetzee can support without any loss of moral compass. But his support is limited to speaking through his writing to individuals. But then that is the gift of all great writers, the ability to change lives through the written word. Coetzee does not need to become a personality, to do his work.

Bookends or the end of the book

A 20th anniversary edition of Carol J. Adams book The Sexual politics of Meat has recently been released. How far have we travelled? Not far it seems. Except that the same images have now been recuperated from selling meat to selling Vegetarianism.

And also are not the use of these images perfect examples of second wave feminism and third wave feminism.

New edition of my bibliography

http://www.ivu.org/history/australian-bibliography.pdf

Well it's still Vegetarian Week

"Food Standards Australia New Zealand (FSANZ) has decided to reject Application A545 – Vegetarian Labelling. This information provides notice to interested parties of the rejection of Application A545. It is not an invitation for public comment."

- oh actually it is


"To propose to use an Australian and New Zealand domestic food standard aimed at
regulating the quality and safety of foods to fulfil needs based on moral and/or religious
beliefs and/or for environmental reasons is a purpose that goes beyond the intent of
Food Standards Australia New Zealand Act 1991."

- heaven forbid, food standards being moral, whatever next, Anarchy?

It's National Vegetarian Week

Vegetarian Society display at Belconnen Library, Canberra.



Events for the Week, can be found here.

Vegetarian web list

A list of the most popular vegetarian related websites is available here. PETA unsurprisingly comes first. The first Australian site is at #89.

Coming soon - Vegetarian Week

I'm thinking of going vegetarian for a week for this event - National Vegetarian Week and for the international one. I wonder how I shall go

Eat less meat - UN

News article from the Times of India highlights that the Indian vegetarian cheif of the UN Climate Change panel Dr Rajendra Pachauri has recommended people eat less meat to benefit the environment. He said this in a speech given under the auspices of the organisation Compassion in World Farming - highlights here.

Vegetarian History final

So vegetarian history buffs the final version of my history of Australian vegetarianism is from yesterday free online at the International Vegetarian Union website at http://www.ivu.org/history/australia/index.html
Not wanting to sound too pompous, but I have tried to make some progress in vegetarianism and animal rights in this country in various ways, useless as it sometimes may seem. However, now I'm done with it as I'm maybe done with the country. So next year in Jerusalem as they say.

So what are the things that stand out in Australia's history, the first is that Australia has for long and still does kill, trade and eat animals out of all proportion to the rest of the world. Secondly, vegetarianism has always been a struggle, first for things to eat, it is amazing to think how hard it was to get even the most basic of foods like vegetables for at least the first 150 years of white settlement, (for instance it took US administration during WW2 for a reasonable system of fruit production and distribution to be brought about (the US needed fruit for its soldiers in the Pacific)) the second is how much antipathy there has been to vegetarians and for so long, in the press, in business and in parliament. The meat industry has many friends and much money, even today it is seen as quite acceptable for television adverts for dead sheep products (video here) to denounce vegetarianism as un-Australian - but in truth that is exactly what it is, profoundly so. Australia is the least vegetarian of all western nations; it eats the most meat and is consequently the fattest nation on earth (it recently won this from the Americans). The most prominent vegetarians were always foreign born settlers from Europe (mainly Britain) they tried appealing to peoples sense of decency, and when that failed tried to use arguments of better health, but always with the same result. Even today looking around at the grass roots of many vegetarian or animal rights organisations, you will find still a predominance of the non-Australian born. It used to be just Europeans, but since the 1970s now happily there are growing numbers of Asian vegetarians also. In fact every vegetarian restaurant I know in Australia is run by Indian or Vietnamese vegetarians. It was for long the case that vegetarians that came to Australia facing the traditional dietary opposition gave up their diet, today I hope that isn't still the case. Though however I did read a report on Korean vegetarian immigrants, which found that since migration to Australia most have adopted the Australian diet.
So what future for Australia, well maybe the knowledge that meat eating is the largest cause of greenhouse gases may do some good, but realistically I know that no great change will happen, but I am least consoled that in future not living here, I won't have the day to day slaughter of animals thrust in my face.

Support the Austrian prisoners of conscience

Please go here and do something about the Austrian animal protectionists imprisoned
http://www.vgt.at/hinweise/20080527Repression/index_en.php

IVU Dresden Conference

I missed the IVU Conference, but hopefully will be able to make North Carolina 2012. Herewith the Minutes of the Meeting of The IVU International Council, 29 July, 2008.

Greenhouse Gas

Hey kids the cars are OK:

'the FAO/UN report indicates that the livestock sector generates 18% of all anthropogenic greenhouse gases (GHG). The transport sector generates 13%. Those GHG are not only CO2, but additionally methane and nitrous oxide. So what the report states is that the meat industry generates more GHG “as measured in CO2 equivalent” than all of transport combined'

Loving animals

A new article by Marc Berkoff is available here.
It gives good reasons as to why we should give animals consideration as individuals, beyond the concept of animal welfare, which posits that animals do not have rights beyond a minimum of care for some species. It includes examples of animal’s capacities to feel both physically and emotionally (which new research is revealing as more profound than we ever imagined). It concludes with an interesting ‘Animals manifesto - 10 reasons why animals are asking us to treat them better or leave them alone.’ This is a good enough start point.
One sentence struck me was:
‘When people tell me they’re doing the best they can do and that they love animals and then harm or kill them I always tell them I’m glad they don’t love me.’

A wonderful example of this attitude that I have personally seen is in the ridiculous spectacle of Australian RSPCA branches which raise money for companion animals through selling other animals bodies in sausage sizzles (Australian term for street hot dog sales). All of the volunteers selling meat would I am sure have labelled themselves as animal lovers.

The argument for animals is a strong philosophic, scientific and moral one. Animals have moral rights to life, as well as freedom from human captivity and infliction of pain, simply by existing – but if that is not enough then because of their sentience, because we share this earth, and because we have no need to harm them. Any emotional argument beyond that is irrelevant. Opposing cruelty to animals cannot be based logically on love, and should be irrespective of emotional entanglements with particular animals or a particular species
If you love animals or an animal, then that would also imply that one could also fall out of love with them or become disengaged with them. This is not a sound footing for any sustaining argument.
I do not and have not loved any individual animal, nor do I have any love for any other non-human species (and I’m pretty choosy about humans too). I can see aesthetic beauty in some non-human species and can admire qualities in others, but there is no real emotional engagement.
In May this year a large white egret came to the large pond in my back garden, in which there were 50 or so goldfish (from an originally saved 5). This egret killed and ate them all. Although I felt regret that the fish had died, I was not greatly emotionally disturbed, and if I had loved the fish would I be expected then to hate egrets, even though they were acting within their nature. Conversely, though if someone said they were going to catch the fish and kill them I would have been enormously emotionally perturbed.
Not being an ‘animal lover’ has never impinged on my attitude that it is immoral to kill, eat, experiment or otherwise interfere with them. And not loving animals does not mean I am not emotionally passionate about defending their rights, it only means I do so in a clear-sighted fashion. There is love at work, but I suppose it is a wider concept, I am in love with the idea of life, and consequently believe that no individual animal should suffer or die needlessly (understanding of course that meat for humans is not necessary).

PETA and publicity

Slightly interesting article in the SMH today entitled: Why does a pro-vegetarian organisation treat women like meat?

It doesn't say anything that hasn't been discussed ad infinitum in the veg* world, but it is interesting to see it mainstream.

For veg*s the idea of meat has long been associated with sexuality - see the work of Carol Adams - The Sexual Politics of Meat: A Feminist-Vegetarian Critical Theory
and Pornography of meat

Adams' work is very well worth reading by all, whatever your dietary practice.

That we have PETA which has used sex to sell vegetarianism extremely successfully in the US and to some extent over here in Australia as well as its Veg* feminist antithesis is not surprising. Veg*s counter to popular opinion rarely agree about anything apart from not killing and eating animals. There are so many routes and causes for veg*ism that there will never be a single unified voice or approach to promoting the diet.

Whilst I think PETA's approach in this instance is shallow I understand its usage, it is trying to get through to the most venal and degraded type of people there are in the world - those that would eat at KFC (the target for the current campaign).
PETA will use any means, because they see, as do other Veg*s, that the most unspeakable crimes are being committed a hundred million times a day and stopping even a fraction of that should be done - by any means necessary. In the face of the daily torture and slaughter that goes on silence is complicity, silence is violence. You may write or speak against it, you may carry out direct actions against it, or you may even take your clothes off - I would not speak against any action.

I did actually write a piece on nudity/naturism and vegetarianism and the long term links between the two, but it is hard to find as it was published in a print naturist publication (gosh they even paid for it, which a veg* journal aint seemingly ever going to do). So outside of PETA's methodology I can see a long historical precedent.

Supreme Master Ching Hai

Watching TV I was surprised to see an ad promoting vegetarianism, I haven't seen one before. So I checked who put it there and its the Supreme Master Ching Hai Association. So not only vege, but run by a woman too. I haven't bothered to check on the religious aspects of this (that would always be disappointing), but the Association runs my local vegetarian restaurant, and the food is very good indeed.