How can you justify spending your time helping animals when so many humans need help?

There are many serious problems in our world that deserve our attention; cruelty to animals is one of them.

No one organization can fight all moral and social crimes; for example, the American Heart Association fights heart disease, but not cancer or any other disease. Save the Children helps starving children, but not disabled veterans. Fortunately, PETA’s pro-animal activities have great power to better the human condition as well. As vegetarians, we advocate eating lower on the food chain, which would not only save 25 billion innocent animals from slaughter each year, but would also save humans from a diet known to cause heart disease and cancer.

We can help feed starving children around the world by choosing carefully what we put on our plates. Adhering to a plant-based diet makes 16 times more food available for other hungry people than consuming a meat-eating diet. Eliminating intensive factory farming of animals would also save precious fresh water and topsoil.

Teaching respect for animals is also an important part of preventing violence to humans. George T. Angell said, “I am sometimes asked, ‘Why do you spend so much of your time and money talking about kindness to animals when there is so much cruelty to men?’ I answer: ‘I am working at the roots.’” Please see our factsheet on the link between violence toward humans and abuse of animals