A bit of a long circular rant here (I stress it is not a personal attack; it is not intended to be offensive):
I am not comfortable with beer being marketed as cruelty free. "The beer approved by PETA" - no thank you.
If we weren't meant to eat animals, how come they're made of meat?
I can not say that I agree with vegetarianism or veganism myself. I know people who have trouble digesting meat; sounds logical to me that they should consider other things in their diet. As a personal dietary choice for others it is probably ok, it is just not for me. I do however support animal anti-cruelty and not unduly causing them distress but I do not equate this to not eating them. I equate this to sustainable and ethical production that follows best practice and animal stress minimisation. I also think that if you're going to harvest a resource that you have a responsibility to utilise it as fully as possible. So isn't it then sensible to use a bit of hoof or a bit of bone in your beer? That is better utilisation of the entire 'product'.
marksfish makes an interesting point too. Can you be sure that the malt is produced organically? No fertilisers, no pesticides, no herbicides that may harm soil microbes, soil fauna, birds and other critters?
What about the papers used in labelling - are they from recycled sources that do not acid bleach?
Are the glass bottles from recycled sources?
How green is your beer, really? Lets just say it is cruelty free. Tell you what, I had a cruelty free steak on the bbq last night.
Here's some more food for thought: What is a good PETA person supposed to wear? Cotton? I wouldn't imagine it would be responsible to do so: Cotton: one of the 'dirtiest' production systems in the world. Despite the ridiculous amounts of herbicides and pesticides used (many of which are systemic and can affect the whole food chain, sterilise the soil, leach into waterways etc) (did you know it is common practice to spray the entire cotton crop with herbicide to kill it just to make sure it all ripens at the same time for more efficient harvesting?) it has a very high water use (so lets not eat rice either because growing it is an inefficient use of water too). Maybe they should wear woollen clothes? Surely it would not be responsible to harm a sheep to remove its wool? Lets not start on the mulesing debate. Lets just say that cutting the wool off them could upset them and a hardcore vegan wouldn't stress them like that. Maybe they should wear sythetic materials, polymers etc of petro chemcial origin? Surely not! But surely they will drive a car to attend a protest.
Maybe we could say, well what am I to wear, or ok maybe we can upset sheep a little bit to get their wool, so long as we don't hurt them? How much 'upset' are we prepared to accept? What if we could end their life in a humane, quick and clean way so that they didn't know it was coming nor were they suffering or hurt for a period of time? Surely that would be ok wouldn't it? Or should they be left in a paddock to die naturally of old age? In that case they will probably be in severe pain for a long period of time because they are malnurished because their teeth have worn down so much they can't effectively feed or maybe they will bleed to death as predators eat them from their rear end in or through their soft bellies. There is nothing peaceful nor tranquil that comes to an animal dying from old age, it is more humane to end their suffering when they get old. Let's just do it a bit earlier and respect the animal by recycling it, reduce wastage of it, and reusing it - preferably over my BBQ.
Please feel free to pass along these comments to your other half.
Ok so am I going overboard? Probably. Am I being a tool? Probably. Should I be wearing a flame suit? Probably. Green and cruelty free are probably not differentiated in John Q Public's mind. My point is, be careful bloke, calling beer cruelty free could be an arguable label. Cruel is quite an ambiguous term. Please don't muddy beer this way.