Most days, this column shoots for thoughtfulness and relevance. It seizes on a single brand video as indicative of a grander trend within digital marketing, or uses a pair of clips to
contrast disparate approaches to achieving a common goal. To that end, its diligent curator combs the Internet to find the newest and neatest brand videos before they’ve clogged your Facebook
feed. When he’s not feeling sad and frowny, anyway.
Well, today is not most days. For I, the aforementioned benevolent incorruptible curator, have happened upon what I believe
to be the Internet’s grandest, most casually argumentative repository of meat videos. This is the mother lode, people. If you are ardently pro-meat and need your fears about the dignity and
grandeur of the meat business allayed, this is your Eden.
Before we begin, however, there’s one obvious existential question to get out of the way: Are we at war with meat?
I’ve never pegged animal-rights groups as Internet rumormongers, but the very existence of a 44-video series (and counting) dedicated to dismissing myths about meat suggests that there’s a
shadow conflict being waged. It pits malnourished kale aficionados against Johnny Hamburger, who loves freedom and puppies. It’s a battle that Big Meat (in the form of the American Meat Institute and the American Meat Science Organization, uninterested advocates both) has reluctantly
chosen to fight, for love of God and country.
Whether or not the anti-meat-ites are succeeding in their nefarious goal of besmirching this proud and decent industry, the American
Meat Institute saw/sees a need to do something about it. And that something is “Meat Mythcrushers,” which addresses concerns you
didn’t know you had. You know, like whether “‘Glue’ Is Used to Hold Some Meat
Together” and whether “Feeding Cattle Corn Is Unnatural.” Spoilers for those not
inclined to click through: meat glue isn’t an actual thing and cattle enjoy a delicious corn on the cob every so often.
If you need an anti-meat argument debunked, look no
further. “Meat Mythcrushers” calmly and definitively puts to rest every possible concern one might have about the environmental, nutritional, processing, safety and animal-welfare aspects
of meat-making and consumption. It takes OMG WTF assertions like “Monitoring of Animal
Welfare in Meat Plants Is Inadequate” and dismisses them with a curt wave of the hand. Really. It’s that straightforward and simple.
As for the videos themselves,
they consist of dialogues between an American Meat Institute exec and Person With A Title That Confers Supreme Wisdom. Occasionally, those people are even identified with a handy on-screen graphic.
Most of the time, the conversation starts with a question (“Is nitrate in cured meat linked to
diseases like cancer? Because that sure sounds like crazy talk to me”) and progresses in an orderly manner for the next three to five minutes.
Take “Myth: Denmark Has Eliminated Antibiotic
Resistance by Banning Use of Antibiotics for Growth Promotion” as an example. In the clip, the American Meat Institute woman and a guy from the University of Minnesota engage in sober-minded
dialogue on what appears to be the deck of a neighboring cruise ship. Both parties to the conversation agree that the titular assertion is as much a myth as “cracking your knuckles leads to
arthritis” or “The Odyssey.” Case closed. Meat haters, you’ve been pwned once anew.
Given
the flash flood of incontestable science conveyed in the “Meat Mythcrushers” clips, it’s stunning that groups like ASPCA and PETA persist with their anti-meat agenda. What chance do
they have against the single-camera, poorly mic’d magnificence of the “Meat Mythcrushers” videos? Give it a rest, losers. You don’t win friends with salad.