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PETA Asks That Accused Cannibal Not Eat Meat in Jail

"Animal rights group PETA has asked the jail housing a man accused of murdering his girlfriend and possibly eating her body parts not to feed him meat, the activist organization told FOXNews.com.

The People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals faxed a letter Thursday to the Smith County Sheriff's Jail in Tyler, Texas, asking that 25-year-old Christopher Lee McCuin be placed on a strict vegetarian diet to prevent him from being "involved in any senseless killing" while he's behind bars, said PETA Vice President Bruce Friedrich.

"Only in a culture where people routinely kill and eat living, feeling beings — corpses — would anybody think to kill and either eat or pretend to eat a human corpse," Friedrich said in a phone interview.

Sheriff J.B. Smith was shocked and amused by the request from Friedrich and said he learned of the letter from the local news media, including The Tyler Morning Telegraph, before actually receiving a copy at his office.

"I thought it was a joke," Smith told FOXNews.com. "I've been sheriff here for almost 30 years. I've seen a lot of things. This pretty much takes the cake."

"This is a jailhouse, not a hotel that takes requests for meals," he said, characterizing the PETA letter as a ploy to get publicity — and a successful one at that.

The Smith County Jail houses about 750 prisoners and serves them three meals a day, amounting to about 2,000 meals daily, according to the sheriff. The menu meets nutritional and calorie requirements established by the Texas Commission on Jail Standards, he said.

PETA believes the prison should go a step further.

"It is up to you to prevent McCuin from contributing to any more suffering and death by placing him on a healthy, humane vegetarian diet," Friedrich wrote in the letter, a copy of which was obtained by FOXNews.com.

Friedrich admitted that there was a distinction to be made between eating a human being and eating an animal, but said there are parallels too.

"Of course it's different, but there are similarities," he said. "If someone is horrified by the idea of eating a human corpse, then it's worth asking why we consider it acceptable to eat a chicken's or a pig's or any animal's corpse. Flesh is flesh."

Smith said McCuin will be fed the same meals — meat and all — as every other prisoner, because it would be against the law to treat him differently.

But PETA wants all the prisoners to be given vegetarian meals."

I don't know which would be more cruel and unusual punishment. Being forced to go on a meat-free diet, or listening to these idiots rant and rave. For as much as I enjoy meat and lots of it, I'd forgo my share of animal flesh if PETA and nutjob groups like it would simply disappear from the face of the earth.