High praise from PETA.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) is the largest animal rights organization in the world and is no stranger to controversy. The organization focuses its attention on the four areas in which the largest numbers of animals suffer the most intensely for the longest periods of time: in laboratories, in the food industry, in the clothing trade, and in the entertainment industry.

PETA has been critical of franchises such as Pokemon for promoting dog-fighting from its perspective.

But in an unexpected move, they are actually giving an award to the newest installation of Cooking Mama for including vegetarian options. This comes over ten years after creating a parody of a previous version of Cooking Mama which required players to cook meat as part of the video game. See the PR below.

Cincinnati — A Proggy Award (“Proggy” is for “progress”) is on its way from PETA to Planet Digital Partners in honor of its upcoming Cooking Mama: Cookstar game, which will include a “vegetarian mode” featuring 90 different meat-free recipes.The vegetarian option is a first for the Cooking Mama series. Previous Cooking Mama games required players to “cook” digital animal flesh—prompting a 2008 PETA parody game called Cooking Mama: Mama Kills Animals, which garnered 10 million page views (and led to 2 million views of video footage of turkeys being abused and killed in the meat industry).

“Cooking Mama’s ‘vegetarian mode’ is sure to be a hit with the huge population of gamers who are committed to choosing kindness over cruelty,” says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. “PETA is honoring Planet Digital Partners for showing other game publishers how to create great games that align with players’ values.”

The game has not been released but is already getting recognition for new additions such as this one. Cooking Mama: Cookstar is rumored to come out in Fall 2019.

What do you think about this latest move from PETA? Let us know below.