Will the Association for Women’s Rights in Development Stick Up for ALL Females?
PETA Urges the Association for Women’s Rights in Development to Serve Vegan Food, Which Doesn’t Cause Female Animals to Suffer
For Immediate Release:
March 6, 2020
Contact:
Megan Wiltsie 202-483-7382
Ahead of International Women’s Day (March 8), PETA is calling on women’s rights organizations across North America––including the Association for Women’s Rights in Development in Toronto––to enact an official vegan meal policy, as several advocacy groups have already done, to show that it doesn’t pick and choose when it comes to the fight for equal rights.
“From humans to hens, we’re all made of flesh and blood, desire freedom, love our families, and value our lives,” says PETA President Ingrid Newkirk. “PETA is asking the Association for Women’s Rights in Development to be an ally across species by rejecting foods that are the product of female subjugation and abuse.”
PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to eat”—points out that sexual exploitation is rampant in the meat, egg, and dairy industries because of speciesism, the human-supremacist mentality that all other animal species are inferior to our own. Pigs and cows endure continuous artificial insemination, and once their reproductive systems wear out, they’re sent to slaughter—as are the hens who live packed on top of each other on filthy egg farms.
For more information, visit PETA.org.
PETA’s letter to the Association for Women’s Rights in Development follows.
Nidhi Goyal
President
Association for Women’s Rights in Development
Dear Ms. Goyal,
Greetings from PETA and our 6.5 million members and supporters worldwide. We appreciate your efforts to empower women and challenge inequality. May we appeal to you to adopt a policy to serve only vegan meals at your events? I will respectfully make the case below that this fits with your mission very well. The issue involves sexual exploitation, sisterhood, environmental concerns, and more.
A growing number of human rights and environmental rights groups—including the Center for Biological Diversity, the Food Empowerment Project, Sea Shepherd, the Center for Constitutional Rights, and the National Lawyers Guild—have pledged to serve only vegan meals during their events. The Golden Globe Awards, the Critics’ Choice Awards, and the Screen Actors Guild Awards have all opted to serve only vegan food. I’m sure you know that continuing to eat animals and their “products” has a terrible environmental impact, in addition to being indefensibly cruel. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, livestock production for meat, eggs, and milk is the leading cause of ocean dead zones, water pollution, species extinction, and habitat destruction—problems that affect us all.
As Gloria Steinem has said, “Imagine we are linked, not ranked.” She also wrote, “The first problem for all of us, men and women, is not to learn, but to unlearn.” All supremacy is learned, and it is up to all of us to unlearn oppressive behavior and ideologies, including speciesism.
When one thinks about it honestly, every female—whether she has fur, fins, feathers, or hair—feels pain and fear and deserves to live her life free from suffering. Sexual exploitation is rampant in the meat, egg, and dairy industries. Farmed animals—especially females—are subjugated, oppressed, and abused, and their reproductive systems are regulated and controlled. Female cows, pigs, and turkeys are routinely and repeatedly raped—there is no other word for it—throughout their brief, miserable lives, and their babies are taken from them, sometimes immediately after birth, to be exploited and eventually killed. We hope you’ll agree that violence against females is always wrong, regardless of species.
We’d be happy to help your staff plan delicious and healthy vegan meals for your events and to offer assistance in any other way. I look forward to hearing back from you.
With best wishes to you in your important work,
Ingrid E. Newkirk
President
