New Vegan Options Earn University of Florida an ‘A’ on peta2’s Vegan Report Card
For Immediate Release:
November 18, 2015
Contact:
Sophia Charchuk 202-483-7382
As the demand for vegan dining is on the rise like never before, Christina Bicknell—president of the campus group Student Association for Animals (SAA) at the University of Florida (UF)—has teamed up with peta2, PETA’s youth division, to help ensure that the surging demand is met with a variety of tasty, humane options on campus. And after nearly a year of negotiations, 20 new vegan menu items have been added to “grab and go” markets across campus, and more vegan breakfast dishes are now being served daily—including favorites like tofu hash and the tempeh and tofu breakfast burrito. Locally made tempeh is now available at all salad bars, while new sets of pans and knives are designated for use only at vegan stations with special cutting areas.
The changes prompted by SAA have also helped boost the school up to an “A” ranking on peta2’s vegan report card. We thought your readers might be interested in hearing about the upgrade, which brings UF two notches above longtime rival—and current “C” school—Florida State University.
Besides being turned off by the massive suffering of animals raised and killed for food—as documented by peta2, whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to eat”—students cite other good reasons for choosing vegan meals. According to the United Nations, raising animals for food is “one of the top … contributors to the most serious environmental problems, at every scale from local to global.” It found that the meat industry causes environmental problems, including land degradation, water shortages, pollution, and loss of biodiversity.
