Beef Industry Scared of Kid's Recipe Contest

The USDA, in conjunction with Let's Move, launched a kid's recipe contest. Submissions can be made in one of three categories: Whole Grains, Dark Green and Orange Vegetables, and Dry Beans and Peas. The grand prize is $3,000 and a chance to have your winning recipe served to the discerning tastebuds of children.

Nothing scares animal agribusiness more than Orange Vegetables and Dry Beans. Carrots are pretty disconcerting vegetables. 

The National Cattlemen's Association is up in a tizzy over what they feel is a discriminatory contest. This is because there is not a "Dead Animal" option in the healthy recipe category, and now the Cattlemen's Association is mad.

According to spokespersons for the beef industry, the USDA continues to perpetuate the "myth" that Americans eat too much meat. This despite the fact that Americans eat too much meat, and that the US government spends hundreds of millions of dollars buying up beef and other animal products at twice the rate of fruits and vegetables to feed as part of the National School Lunch Program. That is, our government helps subsidize and actively endorses animal agribusiness twice as much as they do carrots and peas.

What is so off-putting about the beef people is how seriously afraid of vegetables they are. Eggplants, I get. They're purple and bulbous. But what is so fear-inducing about apples and kale? The contest isn't a mind-blowing, overhaul of the school lunch program. It's a snazzy media ploy. That's it, really.

But I guess the Cattlemen's Association is scared of cute. Sort of how the Pork Council was concerned that unicorn meat might become the next "other white meat". Can't make that stuff up.