Can the SPAM! Meaty Museum Draws PETA’s Pro-Pig Campaign
For Immediate Release:
June 29, 2023
Contact:
Sara Groves 202-483-7382
On Saturday, PETA will unveil a mobile display outside the entrance of the SPAM Museum, urging everyone to leave SPAM in their junk mail and off their plates. To drive home the message, PETA supporters will also be on the scene at 12 noon to hand out free cans of unMEAT’s vegan version of SPAM to passersby. The appeal will remind people that pigs are friends, not food, and that the only compassionate meal is a vegan one—which PETA will help everyone sink their teeth into with a free downloadable vegan starter kit. Photos of the happening will be available upon request.
When: Saturday, July 1, 9 a.m.–5 p.m.
Where: Outside the SPAM Museum, 101 Third Ave. N.E. (between Ninth and 10th streets N.E.), Austin
“Pigs are highly intelligent beings who love their families; experience pain, joy, and fear; and value their lives, just as humans do,” says PETA President Ingrid Newkirk. “PETA is urging everyone to leave pigs in peace and opt for delicious and widely available vegan vittles, including of the luncheon meat variety.”
So far this year, the U.S. meat industry has already killed millions of pigs for food. Raised on severely crowded, filthy feedlots in stalls with barely enough room to turn around, they endure painful mutilations within weeks after birth. Workers chop off piglets’ tails, cut their teeth with pliers, and castrate the males—all without pain relief. Slaughterhouse employees hang pigs upside down, sometimes while they’re still conscious, and bleed them to death. Each person who goes vegan spares nearly 200 animals (including pigs) every year.
In addition to being terrible for pigs, SPAM is horrible for human health. The World Cancer Research Fund International advises eating “little, if any, processed meat,” as it’s associated with not just a higher risk of certain types of cancer but also numerous other ailments, including diabetes, heart disease, and high blood pressure.
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, listen to The PETA Podcast, or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.
