Recently, the eating of baby meat has come under fire from Christian groups. Its fans claim that the Geneva Convention permits feasting on one's own children, such as an alternative to spanking or in response to midnight pangs of hunger. Baby meat was first advanced by gourmet Jonathan Swift in his classic satire, A Modest Proposal, written in the late 1700's. Unfortunately, satire itself was not invented until the late 1800's, and blight-resistant potatoes took even longer, so Swift's humorous pamphlet had unforeseen consequences.