After Woman Shoots at McDonald’s Over Bacon, PETA Has a Plan to Help

Having the bacon left off her burger was enough to prompt Grand Rapids resident Shaneka Torres to fire a handgun at a McDonald’s drive-through, an act that has landed Torres three to seven years in prison—and now, PETA is recommending that remedial eating be included in her sentence. This morning, PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to eat”—sent a letter to Kent County Correctional Facility Sheriff Lawrence Stelma suggesting that he consider providing Torres with exclusively vegan meals during her stay.

PETA points out that, in addition to being healthy, cost-efficient, and easy to prepare, vegan meals have been shown to promote nonviolence, something that every jailer would like to see. Several correctional facilities have seen vegetarian diets help improve inmate behavior when used as part of a violence-reduction program. Vegan meals also spare smart pigs, sensitive cows, curious chickens, and other animals what are often miserable lives and terrifying deaths on factory farms, during transit in all weather conditions, and at slaughter.

“Switching to vegan meals might just help this hot-tempered prisoner curtail some of the rage that led to her incarceration in the first place,” says PETA President Ingrid E. Newkirk. “PETA would gladly help the Kent County Correctional Facility develop a menu that’s healthy, humane, cost-effective—and, of course, 100 percent bacon-free.”