www.pcrm.org
Last week, controversial advertisements created by a nutrition policy reform non-profit organization were posted at Union Station. The ads implicated that President Obama’s daughters were getting more nutritious lunch options than the average American child.
The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine placed fourteen platform posters of the ad in question, which featured eight year-old vegetarian Jasmine Messiah, questioning why healthy lunch options are available to the First Daughters and not to her.
Within 24 hours of the ads appearing, White House attorneys contacted the PCRM and asked that the ads be removed.
The PCRM placed the ads in an attempt to gain public support for vegan and vegetarian lunch options in public schools nationwide. The majority of the 94,000 plus schools in the National School Lunch Program do not currently make meat/animal product-free options available.
PCRM president Neal Barnard feels that the reference to the Obama children is important, stating, “The direct comparison is: You have affluent children with access to healthy foods, and disadvantaged children have the same rights to the same kinds of healthy meals as affluent kids. And we are fighting for that fairness, so we felt that making that statement as directly as we could was important.”
There has been no official response from President Obama himself, and Barnard notes that he believes that the President would object to the ads’ removal, due to not only their important message, but the First Amendment issues at hand.
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