Tuesday, March 18, 1997

Stenholm has beef with Smithsonian over veggie propaganda

By J.T. SMITH / Farm Editor

U.S. Rep. Charlie Stenholm is outraged over the publication of a biased article on vegetarianism in the March issue of MUSE magazine.

MUSE is portrayed as a respectable children's magazine, and is affiliated with the taxpayer-supported Smithsonian Institution. The magazine is aimed at children 6 to 14 years old.

The current cover of the magazine features a photo of a small white-faced calf directly above a caption which reads: "Please don't eat me."

A text box then announces - "The hamburger on your plate is some dead cow's muscle." That is featured prominently on the first page of a 13-page article.

"The biased and technically unsound nature of the article was deeply troubling to me," Stenholm said. "The article was clearly designed to steer children away from meat consumption, largely based on moral arguments."

Stenholm added that there was no attempt at objectively telling two sides of the story.

"Balancing information about modern livestock production was almost completely absent from the article," Stenholm noted.

Stenholm contacts Smithsonian

After investigating the relationship between MUSE magazine and the Smithsonian Institution, Congressman Stenholm sent a letter articulating his displeasure to I. Michael Heyman, secretary of the Smithsonian Institution.

"I want to express to you my strong objections to the publication of the very one-sided article on vegetarianism in the March issue of <I>MUSE<I>," Stenholm wrote. "I would like a personal assurance that this sort of ill use of the Smithsonian Institution will not occur again."

Smithsonian officials have responded quickly to the public and congressional concerns.

The editor responsible for the article has since been dismissed.

Public apologies for the article also were offered by the Smithsonian.

In addition, Secretary Heyman assured lawmakers that the next issue of <I>MUSE<I> will contain materials that offer other views on the issue.

Nevertheless, Stenholm plans to follow future issues of the children's magazine to ensure that no more one-sided articles on the beef matter resume.

If yogurt is a meat?

On another beef. Nothing particularly wrong with yogurt if you like the stuff.

But it is a dairy product, not an interchangeable substitute for beef.

Serving yogurt as a meat substitute in school food programs makes as much nutritional sense as serving ketchup as a vegetable. Yet, that's what USDA has decided to do.

Because of a recently adopted rule, yogurt can be credited as a "meat alternative" for all meals regulated by USDA. That includes the department's low-income and summer feeding programs.

The rule also allows 93,000 schools, participating in the lunch and breakfast programs, to be reimbursed by the federal government for the yogurt they purhase to use in free meal programs.

"If the federal bureaucrats can change a dairy food like yogurt to a meat product with a stroke of a pen, perhaps they'll be interested in reclassyifying sirloin as a vegetable and hamburger as a grain," says Jim Selman, president of the Independent Cattlemen's Association. "No matter how you look at this decision, it flies in the face of historically accepted nutritional science."

In fact, the Agriculture Department is contradicting its own material.

"The USDA includes yogurt with the dairy group in its <I>Food Guide Pyramid,<I> the most recent national nutritional recommendations available," Selman notes.

Yogurt was classified that way because it provides nutrients associated with the dairy group - including protein, calcium, riboflavin, and phosphorus.

But foods from the meat group - like beef - are expected to not only be a source of high quality protein, but also a good source of iron, zinc, thiamin, and niacin.

Yogurt just can't fit the bill there. In fact, USDA has agreed so on <I>three<I> previous occasions.

"In this case, the fourth time was the charm for yogurt makers who have been pushing this change since 1988," Selman says. "On three different occasions, USDA had refused to accept yogurt as a meat substitute because of concerns about the dairy product's high sugar content and nutritional inadequacies - especially in iron content when compared with meat."