‘Go Vegan’ Ad Targets Honey Baked Ham in Charlotte

With COVID-19 Tied to Meat Markets, PETA Urges Specialty Store to Offer Animal-Free Roasts

For Immediate Release:
April 6, 2020

Contact:
Nicole Meyer 202-483-7382

The Honey Baked Ham Company is marketing “Easter hams”—despite a global pandemic that originated in a meat market and the fact that pigs are the incubators of the influenza A virus—so PETA has placed a pro-vegan ad featuring a pig across the street from its Charlotte store and sent a letter to the company’s CEO urging her to sell animal-free, vegan hams as well (or instead of ones made from pigs).

“Pigs are sensitive, smart, and social individuals who don’t want to be killed for Easter—or at any time of the year,” says PETA President Ingrid Newkirk. “PETA wants The Honey Baked Ham Company and other meaty eateries to help prevent future pandemics, save countless animals, and build their business by simply adding vegan options to the menu.”

Deadly outbreaks of swine flu (which originated on U.S. pig farms), mad cow disease, avian flu, SARS, HIV, hoof-and-mouth disease, and other zoonotic diseases have stemmed from farming domesticated animals or capturing animals for food. Pathogens flourish on filthy factory farms and in slaughterhouses, making them perfect breeding grounds for dangerous bacteria and viruses.

Vegan roasts spare sensitive pigs immense suffering. In today’s meat industry, mother pigs are squeezed into narrow metal stalls barely larger than their bodies and kept almost constantly pregnant or nursing. Pigs’ tails are chopped off, their teeth are cut with pliers, and males are castrated—all without any pain relief. At slaughterhouses, they scream as they’re hung upside down, often while still conscious, and bled to death.

The ad is located at 301 E. Woodlawn Rd.

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.