"protest" news and stories

The McCruelty Unhappy Meal. Photo: PETA

Kids hoping to grab a Happy Meal from McDonald's might end up with PETA's Unhappy Meal instead.

The animal rights organization lifted its moratorium on the McCruelty Campaign this year and since June has distributed Chicken McCruelty Unhappy Meals to McDonald's customers outside about a dozen restaurants around the country.

"McDonald's markets its food to children by packaging it in brightly colored boxes with toys," Lindsay Rajt, a spokeswoman for PETA, tells Slashfood. "But most kids really love animals, and if they knew that McDonald's suppliers were breaking the wings and legs of gentle animals like chickens, I think that you'd have to drag kids into McDonald's kicking and screaming."

The campaign, though, has parents "hatin' it."

Hopefully by now you've heard of Flickr, the popular online photo-sharing website. If you ever look at the photo credits for images on Slashfood, chances are you'll see a lot of them come from Flickr. If you are familiar with Flickr, then you might know they've recently added a video sharing option, and some people are not happy about that.

I really don't understand it, but according to Wired plenty of Flickr users are joining groups like "No Video On Flickr". Some other users, though, have a different opinion. A group has popped up to mock the anti video sharing crowd, and this group demands that Flickr give everyone a donut! The "We Demand Free Donuts" group proclaimed that if they got 20,000 members Flickr would have to give in to pressure. Well, Flickr gave in, even though the group only has about 2,500 members so far. If you happen to be in San Francisco today you can go to the meet up and get a free donut.

Victory is so sweet!

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I wish I had thought of this in high school. What I a great way to protest. About 29 kids at Readington Middle School, New Jersey decided to protest the short lunch period by paying for their lunch in pennies. Yep, entirely in pennies. That would be 200 pennies per person that cafeteria workers had to count. Brilliant!

The downside is that the group apparently caused some students to go without lunch that day, which is just a confirmation of how short the lunch time must be.

The prank also got its participants two days' detention. I'm a little torn on that. The students didn't break any rules. They offered legal tender. They only inconvenienced some school employees. At the same time, they inconvenienced some other students who didn't get lunch. Everyone needs to get a healthy lunch (such as it is in public schools). So I think maybe they could use the detention time to think of ways to express their concerns that won't hurt fellow students.

I still thing the protest was brilliant. I was friends with some of the creative, rebellious types, but being the oldest child in my family I was just a little too, um, "follow the rules"to think of something like this. I'm not saying I wouldn't go along with this stunt, I just wouldn't have thought of it.

[Via wcbstv.com]

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To indulge those who want to protest - in their own, small way - the bans and restrictions on various foodstuffs in the country, the Noé restaurant in the Omni Los Angeles Hotel will be hosting an Outlaw Dinner on July 27th. The dinner will be a 7 course meal based around forbidden, or almost forbidden, foods and techniques, including hemp seeds, absinthe and sous vide. The star of the dinner will be foie gras, as the meal both begins (a trio of foie gras as an appetizer) and ends (a dessert of Foie Gras Hot Chocolate and Toasted Marshmallows) with the fatty delicacy. All the food will be prepared under the direction of chef Robert Gadsby, who will preside over a similar dinner in Houston later in the summer.

The dinner is $95 per person and seating is limited. Contact the restaurant for reservations. 

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In the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen, a group of approximately 40 demonstrators gathered to protest the sale of cat meat at the Fangji Cat Meatball restaurant. Protestors initially demanded that any live cats on the premises be freed or turned over to them, but the shop owner had already removed them from the premises. Instead, a search of the kitchen revealed cat meat and a whole, skinned cat in the fridge, which reduced some of the protestors to tears. The restaurant was chosen as the site of the protest because workers at the restaurant had been seen killing cats in the street, something which concerned parents said was traumatic for children attending school nearby.

The owner of the shop defended the sale and consumption of cats - which are, along with dogs, considered to be traditional, comforting fare in the province - but said that he would close his shop.

Perhaps due to outside influences and the increasing popularity of having dogs and cats as pets, the animal rights movement is gaining momentum in China. An increasing perception of these animals as companions and not food could eventually put a stop to the practice all together.

A local beauty queen, who participated in the protest, even urged people to "stop eating cats and dogs and become civilised."

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