The story of a 15-year-old boy in Lubbock, Texas, in need of a liver transplant because of health complications relating to obesity is the latest case highlighting the need for parents to step up and teach their children healthy eating habits. Raising children on a meat-based diet that might lead them to the hospital or an early grave is child abuse, plain and simple. And that's exactly the message on the new billboard that we're trying to run in Lubbock, Texas.

The boy's diet mostly consisted of burgers and pizza, which (duh!) resulted in a fatty liver. This is not a health problem that a child should ever have to face, but unfortunately, he's not the only one. It is becoming a sickening sign of the adolescent obesity epidemic that some adolescents are requiring liver transplants because of poor diets that are rich in fats.

To help spotlight that vegetarianism is a key to overcoming obesity in children as well as parents' responsibility in getting this message to their children, PETA's billboard with the tagline "Feeding kids meat is child abuse. Fight the fat • GoVeg.com" will hopefully be hitting Lubbock shortly.

Many children who are fed a diet of saturated fat– and cholesterol-laden burgers, nuggets, and hot dogs show symptoms of heart disease by the time they reach first grade. Parents don't need to be told that feeding their children such poor diets may be slowly killing them—it's common sense. But they’re feeding it to them anyway.

Child abuse. Plain and simple.

Posted by Carrie Ann Harris

BBC News has just released a list of the top 10 most controversial ads of 2007, and our edgy, boundary-pushing counterparts over in the UK made the list with their “Feeding Kids Meat Is Child Abuse” billboard, which received a whopping 68 complaints to the Advertising Standards Authority in 2007. The way I see it, with literally millions of advertisements bombarding the public every day with messages about how they can make their teeth whiter, or, like, more effectively pluck their eyebrows, creating an ad that makes people stop and think—and that affects some people so profoundly that they’re shocked out of their complacency—is not an easy thing to do. So, excellent work, PETA UK.

It may not be a message that people want to hear, but it’s an important one (a point that was recognized by the Advertising Standards Authority, which ruled that the ad does not trivialize abuse, as complainants had claimed). And, of course, when you consider that feeding kids meat sets them on the road to a higher risk of heart attacks, diabetes, and a whole slew of other health problems, the ad isn’t exactly misstating the case. Here’s the BBC list of controversial ads, and here’s the billboard that’s causing all the fuss. I’d love to hear what you think.