PETA Launches Full-Page Appeal to Consumers: Let Peace Begin on Your Plate
For Immediate Release:
December 17, 2020
Contact:
Brooke Rossi 202-483-7382
Ahead of the ham-heavy Christmas holiday, PETA is running full-page ads in the Vancouver Sun and The Province urging readers to give everyone a little peace on Earth by keeping pigs and all other animals off their plates.
The ads show a still photo of a suffering pig from eyewitness video published by PETA of the Excelsior Hog Farm in Abbotsford, which revealed extreme cruelty to pigs, including that, as the ads point out, “piglets died just out of reach of their distraught mothers or lay dying on feces-covered floors, unable to walk.” Instead of taking action to end the abuse, local law enforcement arrested those allegedly involved in documenting it and federal lawmakers introduced a bill targeting whistleblowers instead of abusers.
“PETA encourages everyone to extend the spirit of goodwill and compassion to all by leaving cruelty to animals off their plates this Christmas,” says PETA President Ingrid Newkirk. “Everything from vegan bacon to vegan holiday hams can be found in stores across Canada, so it’s a snap to choose a festive feast that leaves pigs in peace.”
Pigs at Excelsior Hog Farm—which is owned in part by Ray Binnendyk, a member of the board of directors of the BC Pork Producers Association—had sustained bloody lacerations, and some suffered from volleyball-size umbilical hernias. Sows were forced to give birth in farrowing crates hardly bigger than their bodies, and they could nurse but not otherwise tend to their babies for the first weeks of their lives, causing many to die unattended.
In today’s meat industry, pigs’ tails are chopped off, their teeth are cut with pliers, and males are castrated—all without pain relief. At the slaughterhouse, they’re hung upside down and bled to death. Each person who goes vegan saves the lives of nearly 200 animals every year.
PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to eat”—opposes speciesism, which is a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETA.org or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.
