Frankly, no pun intended, just at the height of the summer hot dog season, we get word from the LA Times that a marginal vegan organization has decided to threaten the manufacturers of America’s favorite sausage with unwarranted lawsuits. You see, for $240 dollars anyone can walk into a courthouse and file a lawsuit. It’s all too easy. And in some cases like this, mainstream media runs the story. For just a few dollars, the organization gets rewarded with serious coverage to promote its true mission to lobby against animal research, promote meat free diets and prevent me from eating one of my favorite foods.

By suing the manufacturers of America’s favorite wieners into placing misleading warning labels on their packages, the organization can influence how many hot dogs Americans really eat. Americans spent more than $3.4 billion and ate more than 730 packages of hot dogs last year.

The lawsuit is not even based on good science. Research done at USC and at Harvard, which reviewed numerous other studies in Europe and across this country, does not support the conclusions of the organization. Further, there is no agreement among nutritional researchers that eating processed meats is any worse for your health than eating fatty foods or sugary desserts. A warning label that singles out only one factor in a person’s diet and ignores all the other dietary considerations is not only inaccurate – it is deceptive.

The real problem here is that lawsuits like this one are all too easy to file. It is wrong that our courts are being used by one ideological group to impose their values on the rest of us. Let us hope the judge in this case quickly tosses out this baloney!