‘Waiting for a Sign to Go Vegan?’ It’s Now on Local Bike Racks!

PETA Ads Suggest That It’s Time to Eat As if Everyone’s Life Depends on It, Because It Does

For Immediate Release:
June 17, 2020

Contact:
Megan Wiltsie 202-483-7382

Wanting to get the wheels turning in everyone’s heads, PETA has placed ads on bike racks throughout the city as reminders that with the world still in the grip of a novel coronavirus that originated in a meat market, it’s time to vote for animal welfare, slaughterhouse workers’ safety, and human health (including reduction of the risk of contracting dangerous diseases) by trying vegan foods.

The ad makes the point that U.S. factory farms and slaughterhouses are as filthy as China’s “wet markets,” their floors covered with blood, urine, feces, and offal—and that a meat shortage doesn’t mean a food shortage, because no one needs meat. Consumption of it is linked to heart disease, cancer, strokes, high blood pressure, diabetes, and obesity. The ad urges, “Eat As if Everyone’s Life Depends on It, Because It Does.“

“Filthy meat markets and slaughterhouses threaten the health of every human on the planet and are a nightmare for animals,” says PETA President Ingrid Newkirk. “PETA has free vegan starter kits, free vegan mentor services, and free tips to help anyone kick meat to the curb—all anyone has to do is ask.”

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to eat”—notes that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warns that approximately 75% of recently emerged infectious diseases affecting humans originated in other animals. Swine flu began on a U.S. factory farm, other influenza viruses have been traced to chickens, and the next pandemic is inevitable as long as humans continue to consume the flesh of sick and stressed animals who are held in filthy, crowded warehouses and slaughtered by the billions.

The group has placed ads urging people to move away from meat in The Washington Post, the Washington Examiner, and elsewhere and has sent letters to major meat companies offering to help with the cost of retraining employees to produce exclusively vegan meat.

The ads are located at 300 M St. S.E.; outside the King Greenleaf Recreation Center near the intersection of M and First streets S.W.; at the intersection of Fourth and E. Capitol streets N.E.; at 300 Pennsylvania Ave. S.E.; and in Eastern Market near Market Poultry, Union Meat, and Bowers Fancy Dairy Products.

PETA opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETA.org.