WASHINGTON – Whole Foods’ recent decision to begin testing the sale of rabbit meat in its stores has earned the company an unlikely ally: the Republican Party. Leading GOP lawmakers are praising the grocery store chain for “supporting carnivores’ freedom of choice” and say they’re making it “a legislative priority to get a rabbit carcass on every American dinner table.”

“I don’t have many nice things to say about Whole Foods,” said Florida senator Marco Rubio. “But on this issue, they’re right on the money. Americans can and should eat any meat they choose, regardless of how cute it may seem before it’s slaughtered.”

“Even rabbits eat rabbit meat,” noted House Republican Steve King of Iowa. “They devour their young all the time. To me, that means it must be pretty gosh-darn tasty.”

Critics of the company’s decision include the House Rabbit Society—a rabbit advocacy organization—which has distributed leaflets protesting the move. A petition demanding that Whole Foods stop selling rabbit meat has received over 13,000 signatures, although that number is dwarfed by the roughly two million Americans recently polled who said that they would gladly eat “anything with meat on its bones,” including their children’s pets.

Many Republicans are saying that their taste for rabbit is recently-acquired.

“I never really wanted to eat a rabbit before,” recalled Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. “But ever since these people started criticizing Whole Foods and threatening my freedom to do so, a nice rabbit steak has sounded pretty delectable.”

Whole Foods said that it waited to begin the sale of rabbit meat until it had found a “system of rabbit-slaughtering that maintains high standards of animal welfare,” a process that took reportedly took four years. But Republicans say they wish Whole Foods “hadn’t been such pansies and just rolled this thing out sooner.”

“Meat just tastes worse when it’s been humanely slaughtered, in my opinion,” said former Alaska governor and failed vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin. “The key ingredient to a delicious meal is a violent, bloody death for whatever furry critter graces your plate.”