Animal right’s group PETA has picked Network 10’s MasterChef as it’s latest target in it’s quest to end the harming of animals.
The group has written to the show’s producers suggesting that the series add new “accurate aprons” which “reflect the impact of the show’s relentless promotion of flesh-based meals on animals and the planet”.
Included in the letter is an artist’s impression of the new apron design, featuring blood spatter, bloodied handprints, scorch marks, and a “D” for “DisasterChef” in place of the “M” for “MasterChef”.
“Power aprons, golden aprons, pressure test aprons.… We know your franchise is big on meaningful aprons,” writes the group. “So we’d like to propose the adoption of the ‘accurate apron’.”
The letter continues, “The blood spatter represents the thousands of cows, sheep, pigs, crustaceans, fish, and other animals who have been violently slaughtered to make the dishes featured on your show as well as those made by home chefs working from recipes housed on the 10Play website, which features over 15 years of MasterChef episodes. The handprints symbolise that every time contestants use eggs or dairy in recipes, there is blood on their hands.”
In a media release the group said that between 500 million and 700 million individual land animals are slaughtered each year to feed “Australia’s appetite for flesh”. This doesn’t include sea animals that are slaughtered in such high numbers, that the figure is recorded in tonnes.
Male chicks are some of the hardest hit animals, it said.
“In the Australian egg industry, male chicks, deemed waste products because they cannot lay, are gassed or ground up while still alive just a few days after hatching. In the dairy industry, cows are forcibly impregnated repeatedly only for their babies to be torn away from them – and all so that humans can consume a mother’s milk meant for her baby. If the calf is female, she will likely follow in her mother’s sorrowful footsteps. Male or “bobby” calves, meanwhile, are slaughtered for veal within two weeks of birth”.
“Of course, animal agriculture is not only cruel but also environmentally destructive,” writes the group. “The scorch marks on the apron symbolise the huge contribution that raising animals for food makes to the climate catastrophe. Greenhouse gases, such as methane, have an immense warming effect, while clearing land to make way for grazing animals is the leading cause of habitat loss and one of the main threats to native species, such as the now-endangered koala.”
