Ban Meat Sales and Advertisements on Mahatma Gandhi Roads, PETA India Urges City Administrations

For Immediate Release:

30 September 2022

Contact:

Hiraj Laljani; [email protected]

Dr Kiran Ahuja; [email protected]

Mumbai – Just in time for Gandhi Jayanti (2 October), People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) India has sent letters to the municipal heads of cities across India, including Agra, Bengaluru, Gangtok, Guwahati, Hyderabad, Indore, Kochi, Kolkata, Lucknow, Mangalore, Mumbai, Mysore, Nashik, Panaji, Pondicherry, Pune, Raipur, Raigarh, Shillong, Thiruvananthapuram, Thane, Tumkur, Vadodra, requesting that they honour Mahatma Gandhi’s dedication to non-violence by prohibiting the sale and advertisement of meat on the city’s Mahatma Gandhi (MG) Road starting from Gandhi Jayanti. PETA India’s letter points out that the political and spiritual leader believed “flesh-food to be unsuited to our species” and encouraged his followers to show compassion for all living beings.

“Selling and advertising meat on a road bearing Mahatma Gandhi’s name is disrespectful to his teachings of ahimsa. Non-violence starts with what we put on our plates,” says PETA India Manager of Vegan Projects Dr Kiran Ahuja. “PETA India is encouraging cities across India to turn the roads into a haven for peaceful and humane meat-free meals, in honour of Gandhi ji.”

PETA India agrees with Gandhi ji that meat-free meals spare animals immense suffering. In today’s meat, egg, and dairy industries, billions of animals are raised in vast warehouses in severe confinement. As PETA India reveals in the video exposé “Glass Walls”, chickens killed for food are often shackled upside down before their throats are slit. Cows and buffaloes are crammed into vehicles in such large numbers that their bones often break before they’re dragged off to the slaughterhouse. Pigs are stabbed in the heart as they scream. On the decks of fishing boats, fish suffocate or are cut open while they’re still alive.

Eating vegan also reduces one’s risk of heart disease, strokes, cancer, diabetes, and obesity; helps fight the climate catastrophe by reducing greenhouse-gas emissions; and can even prevent future pandemics. COVID-19 is largely believed to have stemmed from a live-animal meat market, and SARS, swine flu, and bird flu have also been linked to confining and killing animals for food.

PETA India – whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to eat” and which opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview – also sent the appeal to officials in more than 25 other cities with roads named after Mahatma Gandhi.

For more information on PETA India, please visit PETAIndia.com or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.

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