Paul McCartney’s Birthday Wish: ‘Watch My PETA Video and Ditch Meat’

Music Legend Celebrates 10th Anniversary of ‘Glass Walls,’ His Hard-Hitting Look Inside the Meat Industry

For Immediate Release:
June 11, 2020

Contact:
Moira Colley 202-483-7382

“All I’ve ever wanted for my birthday is peace on Earth—including for the animals,” McCartney writes in a guest blog for PETA, a week ahead of his June 18 birthday. “That’s why this year I’m urging fans to watch a video I hosted for PETA titled ‘Glass Walls.’ We called it that because if slaughterhouses had glass walls, who would want to eat meat?”

McCartney, soon to turn 78, filmed “Glass Walls” exactly 10 years ago for PETA’s website, where it has been seen by over 20 million people.

“Glass Walls” reveals that chickens and turkeys are confined to filthy sheds by the tens of thousands, pigs are often conscious while their throats are cut, and fish are dragged out of their marine homes and left to suffocate on the decks of fishing boats. In the age of COVID-19, the video also serves as a reminder that when animals are packed together in filthy conditions, disease runs rampant: The novel coronavirus originated in a Chinese wet market where live and dead animals were sold for human consumption, swine flu began on a U.S. factory farm, and other influenza viruses have been traced to chickens. The meat industry is also a major producer of the greenhouse gases that contribute to climate change.

“Whether you’re worried about diseases that spring from slaughterhouses, the animals who suffer terribly and needlessly, or the catastrophic impact of the meat industry on our environment, please watch this short video and share it with your friends,” says McCartney.

McCartney is part of a long list of celebrities—including Natalie Portman, Alicia Silverstone, Thandie Newton, Joaquin Phoenix, Jermaine Dupri, Pamela Anderson, Maggie Q, Woody Harrelson, Bellamy Young, RZA, Peter Dinklage, Madelaine Petsch, Evanna Lynch, and Mýa—who’ve teamed up with PETA or its affiliates to encourage people to stop eating animals.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to eat” and which opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview—offers a free vegan starter kit (available here) full of recipes, tips, and more. For more information, please visit PETA.org.