PETA Jumps in Line to Sponsor Rest Stop With Pro-Vegan Message
Group Wants New Hampshire Motorists to Switch to Humane, Healthy, and Earth-Friendly ‘Fuel’
For Immediate Release:
April 10, 2013
Contact:
Sophia Charchuk 202-483-7382
Concord, N.H. — PETA has just sent a letter to the New Hampshire Department of Transportation and the state Department of Resources and Economic Development offering to purchase the naming rights of a highway rest stop should the proposal to sell those rights be passed by the state legislature. PETA’s sign would read, “Rest Easy. Stop Cruelty. Go Vegan Area.” PETA’s point? That going vegan is the best way for people to help stop animal suffering, safeguard the planet, and protect their own health.
“Drivers pay attention to what they put in their gas tanks, but they routinely fill their own bodies with foods that are murder on animals and that make themselves sick,” says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. “Our message could have motorists treating their bodies with the respect that they deserve and running like well-tuned machines.”
Consumption of meat, eggs, and dairy products has been linked to heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and other ailments. Also, raising animals for food is a leading cause of water consumption and pollution, land degradation, and the greenhouse-gas emissions that contribute to climate change. Moreover, everyone who goes vegan saves more than 100 animals each year from suffering on industrialized farms and a painful, terrifying death in slaughterhouses.
For more information, please visit PETA.org.
PETA’s letter to the New Hampshire Department of Transportation and the Department of Resources and Economic Development follows.
April 10, 2013
Chris Clement, Commissioner
Department of Transportation
Jeffrey J. Jones, Acting Commissioner
Department of Resources and Economic Development
Dear Messrs. Clement and Jones:
I’m writing on behalf of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) and our more than 3 million members and supporters, including thousands across New Hampshire. If the current bill to allow the sale of rest-area naming rights becomes law, we’d like to offer to pay to rename one of the stops the “Rest Easy. Stop Cruelty. Go Vegan Area.”
Every traveler who decides to go vegan after visiting our stop would be able to rest easy knowing that he or she will be saving the lives of more than 100 animals each year as well as sparing his or her arteries and being environmentally responsible. Animals used by the meat, egg, and dairy industries are subjected to intensive confinement, routine mutilations, and painful and frightening deaths in slaughterhouses. Cows exploited for their milk, for example, are genetically manipulated and often drugged in order to force them to produce up to four and a half times the amount of milk that they would naturally make for their calves, and they commonly have their sensitive horn tissue burned out of their heads with a red-hot iron. Chickens on egg factory farms have the sensitive tips of their beaks cut off with a hot blade and are crammed into cages so small that they can’t even stretch their wings. When their egg production declines, they are sent to a violent slaughter.
Vegan travelers’ eating habits help offset the greenhouse-gas emissions produced by their vehicles since, according to researchers at the University of Chicago, switching from a standard American diet to a vegan diet is a more effective way to combat climate change than switching from a standard American car to a hybrid. And by cutting meat, eggs, and dairy products out of their diets, New Hampshire residents and tourists would get on the road to good health. Vegans are, on average, 18 percent thinner than meat-eaters, and according to the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, they are also less prone to obesity, heart disease, cancer, and diabetes.
If the bill passes, please let us know how we can speed up our application, as our sponsorship would help get New Hampshire in the fast lane to fiscal stability and a clear conscience.
Sincerely,
Chris Holbein
Associate Director
