Enes Kanter Freedom Teams Up With PETA for Vegan Plea in March Madness Program

For Immediate Release:
March 13, 2023

Contact:
Robin Goist 202-483-7382

Hundreds of thousands of fans attending the 2023 NCAA Tournament games—aka “March Madness”—will be pushed by PETA to “give vegan a shot” when they open their official tournament programs and see former NBA star Enes Kanter Freedom wielding a head of lettuce like a basketball and looking fresh in a suit made entirely of leafy greens.

During quarantine in the NBA “bubble” in 2020, Kanter Freedom began reading about the meat, egg, and dairy industries, learning that animals’ throats are cut while they’re still conscious, millions of hens are confined to cramped cages mired in their own filth, and mother cows are separated from their beloved babies shortly after birth.

“The more I read and the more I watched and learned and educated myself, my heart was just shattering,” says Kanter Freedom. “That was the first time I decided we need change, and change cannot wait.”

Each person who goes vegan saves nearly 200 animals every year; reduces their own risk of suffering from heart disease, diabetes, obesity, and cancer; and shrinks their carbon footprint.

“As an athlete, if I can do this, you can do this, too,” promises Kanter Freedom, who belongs to a growing list of athletes and other celebrities—including Cam Newton, Tyrann Mathieu, Le’Veon Bell, Devin Funchess, Lonnie Walker, Alex Morgan, and Elena Delle Donne—who’ve teamed up with PETA to promote kindness to animals.

Official tournament programs are also available for $10 at major newsstands, college bookstores, supermarkets, pharmacies, and airports in the home cities of competing teams.

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, listen to The PETA Podcast, or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.