Where’s the beef?

Following the release of a new study tying grilled meat to the release of greenhouse gasses, New York’s mayor has declared the city barbeque-free, in a decision that is making waves among the big apple’s red-meat minority.
“New York has long been in the forefront of the fight against greenhouse gasses,” announced mayor Judy Ruleiani at a press conference earlier this week. “We were the first to pioneer skimmed lattes as carbon sinks, and our exhale-rationing system has made great returns in restricting human-driven emissions. Now we can be in the vanguard of the environmental revolution once again through a ban on all outdoor cooking apparatus.”
The study, released by professor Herman Groot of Queen’s University in Belfast, demonstrated that five pounds of cooked hamburger meat releases more carbon dioxide than the use of a full tank of gasoline.
“I was startled when I first got a look at the results,” said Groot. “Originally our team had been testing emissions on automobile exhaust, and we simply left the equipment running while I went to grill some lunch.”
“When we went to restart the experiment, we realized that the smoke from the barbeque had been caught up in the filter, and had gone way beyond any of our other readings.”
Ruleiani’s decision has sparked a mass exodus among New York’s conservative population, with many calling this the latest move in a worldwide vegetarian conspiracy.
“With presidential elections coming up this year, this is a perfect excuse for the city’s liberal ‘veggie elite’ to purge New York of its conservative minority,” said Walter Piker, president of the Young Red-meat Conservative Alliance.
Brushing aside the concerns of her opponents, Ruleiani said she would be looking for broad-based support for a nation-wide boycott of outdoor grills. Her plan has been well-received by several state representatives, in particular California’s congressmen, who report their desire to move towards an eventual ban of all red meat throughout the country.
Representatives of the Texas legislature could not be reached directly for comment, but aides said that this “anti-meat brigade conspiracy” would not go unanswered, and that the state was considering a range of actions, from civil disobedience cow-roasts, to secession from the union.