Vida Guerra Shows How Hot a Vegetarian Diet Can Be
Vida Guerra has teamed up with PETA to raise awareness of the suffering endured by animals used for food and to promote the benefits of a vegetarian lifestyle. She stars in a print public service announcement to encourage others to spice up their lives by going vegetarian. On average, vegetarians weigh less, live longer, and enjoy a lower risk of health-related concerns such as heart disease, strokes, cancer, and diabetes than meat-eaters. Vida urges her fans, “I challenge anyone to try it out for 30 days and then after 30 days evaluate your life and how you feel.”
On factory farms, pigs, who are commonly used for food in Vida’s native country of Cuba, spend their entire lives in extremely crowded, filthy pens. The tails of these intelligent animals are cut off, the ends of their teeth are broken off with pliers, and the males are castrated—all without any painkillers to ease their suffering.
When the time comes for slaughter, pigs are packed into trucks and transported hundreds of miles in extreme weather. Many die of heat exhaustion in the summer or arrive frozen to the inside of the truck in the winter. According to industry reports, more than 1 million pigs die in transport each year, and an additional 420,000 are crippled by the time that they arrive at the slaughterhouse.
A typical slaughterhouse kills up to 1,100 pigs every hour. The sheer number of animals killed makes it impossible for them to be given humane, painless deaths. Because of improper stunning, some pigs are still conscious when they are dumped into tanks of scalding-hot water, which are used to remove their hair and soften their skin.
The cruel treatment of pigs is just one example of how animals are abused on factory farms. Cows, chickens, turkeys, and fish suffer through similar horrors. There are so many cruelty-free and tasty alternatives to meat, and going vegan saves the lives of approximately 100 animals a year! Check out PETA’s free vegetarian/vegan starter kit to learn about the many benefits of a plant-based diet.
Do something good for both animals and yourself. Join Vida Guerra and pledge to be veg now!
