‘ThanksVegan’? PETA, Vigilante Vegan to Pass Out Free Meatless Roasts
Giveaway Is Part of PETA’s Fight for Food Justice
For Immediate Release:
November 12, 2021
Contact:
Megan Wiltsie 202-483-7382
It’s a vegan turkey free-for-all! On Tuesday, PETA supporters will join Stewart Mitchell (aka “Vigilante Vegan”) to distribute hundreds of free Tofurky roasts to passersby at Brooklyn Junction along with an appeal for them to give turkeys a break this holiday by celebrating “ThanksVegan.” Recipients will also be invited to join PETA’s new food-justice campaign, which calls on the government to redirect meat, egg, and dairy industry subsidies toward incentives for grocers in food deserts to stock fresh fruits, vegetables, and other healthy, humane vegan foods.
When: Tuesday, November 16, 12 noon
Where: Brooklyn Junction (at the intersection of Flatbush and Nostrand avenues), Brooklyn
“When people realize that turkeys love their families, feel pain and fear, and value their lives, they’re eager to put a vegan turkey on the table,” says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. “PETA is calling on local, state, and government agencies to stop pushing the meat industry’s agenda and to provide underserved communities with healthy vegan food.”
Stocking stores in food deserts with healthy vegan food would help vulnerable communities reduce their rates of cancer, heart disease, and diabetes and help the environment, given that animal agriculture is responsible for nearly one-fifth of human-induced greenhouse-gas emissions. And furnishing holiday tables with delicious vegan roasts would help prevent turkeys from being dragged through an electrified bath in slaughterhouses before their throats are slit and they’re dumped into scalding-hot defeathering tanks.
The U.S. government spends about $38 billion in tax money each year to subsidize the meat, egg, and dairy industries—the vast majority of which goes to big corporations, not American farmers—while only about $17 million is used to subsidize the fruit and vegetable industries. PETA launched the food-justice campaign in Atlanta with Pinky Cole of Slutty Vegan, and additional events are planned for Baltimore and Los Angeles.
PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to eat”—opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETA.org or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.
