PETA India Duo Body-Painted as Earth to Appeal to G20 Working Group to Fight Climate Catastrophe With Vegan Foods

For Immediate Release:

9 February 2023

Contact:

Radhika Suryavanshi; [email protected]

Sanskriti Bansore; [email protected]

Bengaluru – People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) India volunteers – a man and a woman painted blue and green to resemble the Earth – will take to the streets in Bengaluru to urge G20 Environment and Climate Sustainability Working Group participants to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and address other environmental crises by urging the public to go vegan. The duo, bearing signs that read “G20: Urge Vegan for the Earth’s Sake”, will inform passers-by that meat, egg, and dairy production harms the planet.

When:        Friday, 10 February, 12 noon to 1 pm

Where:     The Sappers War Memorial, Brigade Road, Shantala Nagar, Richmond Town, Bengaluru 560025

“Raising animals for food is a leading cause of environmental degradation, as it requires massive amounts of land, food, energy, and water while emitting enormous quantities of greenhouse gases,” says PETA India Campaigns Manager Radhika Suryavanshi. “PETA India is urging G20 participants to save us from the worst effects of the climate catastrophe by committing to promoting vegan foods.”

Meat, egg, and dairy production is a leading cause of pollution and the resulting ocean dead zones, habitat destruction from land use, and consequently, species extinction. It uses one-third of the world’s freshwater resources and, by some estimates, creates more greenhouse gas emissions than all of the world’s transportation systems combined. Researchers at the University of Oxford found that every person who goes vegan lowers their food-related carbon footprint by up to 73%, making it conceivably the single biggest way to reduce a person’s impact on the planet.

Going vegan also directly benefits human health. COVID-19 is largely believed to have first infected humans through a live-animal meat market. Similarly, SARS, swine flu, bird flu, and other diseases have stemmed or spread to humans from confining and killing animals for food. And according to the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, vegans are at reduced risk of dangerous health conditions, including heart disease, type-2 diabetes, hypertension, certain cancers, and obesity.

Vegan eating also helps animals. As PETA India reveals in its video exposé “Glass Walls”, chickens used for eggs are confined to cages so small they cannot even spread a wing. Cows and buffaloes are crammed into vehicles in such large numbers that their bones often break before they’re dragged off to the slaughterhouse, and 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. Newborn male chicks are ground up, burned, or buried alive in the egg industry since they cannot lay eggs, while male calves in the dairy industry are commonly abandoned, left to starve, or killed since they cannot produce milk.

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

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