Get News & Views Updates
Most Popular This Week
Popular content
Today's Top News
'Cannibal Cafe' in Berlin a Vegetarian Campaign Hoax
German Vegetarian Society says Flime restaurant was ruse to illustrate damage done by over-consumption of meat
It boasted that it would introduce a new dining movement to Germany, called for diners to donate body parts to be incorporated into the dishes, and even advertised for a surgeon to perform the amputations.
But
Flime, the Berlin restaurant which was nicknamed the "Cannibal Cafe"
and was due to open in Berlin today has - perhaps not surprisingly -
been exposed as a fake.
Flime stands for Fleisch Isst Menschen, or Meat Eats People, and has been revealed as the idea of the German Vegetarian Society (Vebu) as a rather obscure way to bring consumers' attention to the evils of meat-eating.
The only trouble is that the publicity sparked by the high-profile promotion for the hoax restaurant has far outweighed the attention paid to today's press conference at which Vebu announced it was all a ruse to illustrate a serious point.
"Vebu wants to draw attention to all of us who are affected by the worldwide consumption of meat," the society said in a statement. It pointed out that every 3.6 seconds somebody dies in the world due to undernourishment, while the majority of grain production is used for the feeding of farm animals. "Nobody really thinks about those facts in their day-to-day routine. Because of that it was necessary to call this creative campaign into action," said Sebastian Zösch of Vebu at a Berlin press conference.
Vebu added that livestock farming "produces more greenhouse gases than the entire transportation sector" and that water consumption could be cut drastically if people gave up eating meat, due to the large quantities of it that are used in meat production.
Last month the Guardian reported that the campaign for the restaurant which was in newspapers, online, on TV and radio, had provoked angry reactions from Berlin residents, many of whom were reminded of the case of the German cannibal Armin Meiwes who was sentenced to life imprisonment for murdering and consuming Berlin technician Bernd Brandes in 2001.
The supposed restaurant owners claimed their cuisine was inspired by the indigenous Brazilian Waricaca tribe, famous for once practicing the ritual of "compassionate cannibalism", in which parts of the corpse of a loved one were consumed as a way of coping with death.
Comments
Note: Disqus 2012 is best viewed on an up to date browser. Click here for information. Instructions for how to sign up to comment can be viewed here. Our Comment Policy can be viewed here. Please follow the guidelines. Note to Readers: Spam Filter May Capture Legitimate Comments...
13 Comments so far
Show AllDon't fore-get the Fore in PNG who also practised cannibalism and ended up with Kuru...
It seems the the UK government may be allowing meat by-products to be fed to cows.
I think only those in power should eat the meat and suffer the consequences.
Would we ever be able to tell they had brain damage from BSE??
This may be one of the most unintentionally funny articles ever posted on CD.
Kudos to the German Vegetarians for using their imagination and a sense of humor to get this subject into the mainstream media.
q
I'm all against the horrors of CAFOs- but I'd like to see the day when vegetarians and vegans look into the destructiveness of agriculture. Research where there food comes from rather than regurgitating stats about grain. Our whole food system is messed. We should be pushing for sustainable and just food practices... might break hearts and fry minds, but those practices involve animals. Find what's sustainable... every other aspect, moral or political, falls to sustainability. This whole meat vs. veg. is a waste of time, energy and very divisive.
Chickens are easy to raise. If you have a small lawn you can move them around the lawn and you don't even have to feed them. They live off grubs and worms. Vegetarians are self rightous idiots... Mmm chickens.
You can take out the 'self-rightous' and there YOU are.
Why shouldn't humans, who die from accidents, and other similar cases, be eaten for meat, from an ethical standpoint?
Don't worry- the topsoil is gone so we're eating oil. We'll have to resort to cannibalism soon enough. You'll get your wish... you'll get your wish. Just watch out for those Prion diseases, fellow zombies...
Compassionate cannibalism--is that the same as compassionate conservatism?
Yes, it is very threatening to have your eating habits questioned but me think's many of the carnivores are over reacting. They attach the alternative viewpoint of eating vegetarian as some type of (as quoted above) "propaganda" when in fact any person over 50 has probably scene a countless thousands of advertisements for the meat, dairy, chicken, and related food and restaurant industries. How many "Every Body Needs Milk" ads have been buried in our consciousness? This by a food that throughout the animal kingdom (yes man is an animal) is given up well before adolescence
Gandhi when sick in England as a student was told he would die if he didn't take meat. Is this anything less then pure ignorance and/or purposeful propaganda? Change is very threatening to our psyche as we crave the familiar and distrust the new. Maybe that's why we seem to be failing so miserably in addressing global warming. Vegetarianism has been with us since the dawn of time (to a greater or lessor degree) even in our myths (i.e. Peaceable kingdom etc.).
Without having a pissy fit I would challenge anyone who has never tried the meatless way to give it a go for 4 months. This would include trying to eat vegetable foods in as much of their whole state as possible and see if you don't feel more clear, healthy and peaceful.
If you cannot step into the laboratory of your own body and preform this experiment in a pragmatic and scientific way, then I lose respect for your courage and hope for our future.
Nobody on this board is a carnivore (you're talking about propaganda? Derisive way to refer to those who disagree with you). Humans are and have been "from the dawn of time" omnivores (hunter-gatherers). Our bodies aren't evolved to be vegetarian (e.g. take a look at brain size and digestive tract length). Plain and simple. I have no problem with others choosing not to eat meat. I don't think it's healthy, but hey- it's your body.... but that's not the vegetarian movement's M.O... it's all about attacking others for eating meat- ethical and environmental arguments as to why people shouldn't eat meat (which can easily be countered). Nobody ever argues that CAFOs are a good thing. They're horrible. Feeding grain to animals is horrible. The whole modern food system is horrible- agriculture included. But it doesn't follow that stopping eating meat is the solution. Do vegetarians know where their food comes from? Who owns your glorious soy monocrop? How many acres of topsoil were destroyed for your lettuce? How large are the dead zones in the oceans today from fertilizers? How's the aquifer in your region? Hows about we focus on a sustainable diet... that's where the real energy should be. Setting aside moral, political and health concerns, vegetarianism isn't sustainable b/c agriculture is insanely destructive- so much for a just diet...
Will they be sued for false advertising?
That was my first thought. My second was that old point about what the critters we eat themselves eat. They don't eat food that is fit for human consumption. At least the last time I looked into it they didn't.
ralph 442, I remember reading about a study of Indian expats living in England and becoming ill from vitamin B-12 deficiency. At first they couldn't figure it out, they were eating the same foods that they ate in India yet didn't suffer from it there. Why was this happening? What they discovered upon analyzing the ingredients used in both places was that the flours used in India had just enough bugs in it, combined with the dairy they consumed from cheeses, ghee, etc., to supply the populace with the minimum B-12 amounts required to remain healthy. The flour in England was too clean.
I don't like the self-righteous attitudes that some people on both sides of this debate display, either. It's counter productive to finger point and name call when trying to get people to understand and empathize with your point of view.
That being said, from a practical standpoint, meat production does use up a significantly greater amount of resources than does growing foods for direct human consumption, and we'd all do well to at least reduce our meat consumption. Before anyone tries to accuse me of being a militant anything, I am actually an omnivore myself. What my own focus has been on lately is buying a much of my food locally as I can, often directly at farmers markets. I worry that some vegetarians and vegans, by supporting large scale agro-business when buying their "soy-products" are not living quite as lightly as they'd like to think. As reduced availability of oil begins to deeply effect out culture, we will need to change our habits of consumption, and buying locally or at least regionally is going to become a necessity rather than a choice. But we need to support and develop local food systems now while resources are still available to make those changes more easily. It's like a lot of things; the longer we wait to make these changes, the harder it's going to be to make them, and the greater the price we will have to pay when the changes catch us unprepared.