Will Leicester Clock Tower Feature ‘It’s High Time We Went Vegan’ Message?

For Immediate Release:

8 June 2020

Contact:

Sascha Camilli +44 (0) 20 7923 6244; [email protected]

Will Leicester Clock Tower Feature ‘It’s High Time We Went Vegan’ Message?

Timely Request is Made By PETA to Leicester Council

Leicester – As the world finds itself in the throes of the COVID-19 crisis, PETA has reached out to Leicester City Council asking to place a banner on Leicester clock tower. The banner, proclaiming, “It’s High Time We Went Vegan,” would inform residents that the best way to prevent future pandemics is by taking meat, eggs and dairy off our plates. Leicester is considered by many to be the “home of veganism”, as the term “vegan” was coined in this town in 1944 by activist Donald Watson.

Leicester, UK, April 10, 2017: People are passing clock tower in Leicester, England

A high-resolution version of the mock-up image is also available here.

“The clock is ticking until the next pandemic – as long as animals are confined amid their own filth at meat markets, we risk another SARS, MERS, avian flu, or swine flu outbreak,” says PETA Director Elisa Allen. “We can’t turn back the clock, but PETA’s banner will encourage everyone to take personal responsibility and help prevent the next global health crisis by going vegan.”

Many cows killed for beef spend their entire lives indoors, never able to graze in fields or move freely. At the abattoir, many are still conscious as they’re skinned. Chickens raised for their flesh may be confined to filthy, windowless sheds with 50,000 or more other frightened birds. Bred to grow much larger than is natural for them, they often suffer from leg deformities, heart failure, and diseases resulting from filthy conditions and intensive crowding. Billions of fish and other sea animals are killed every year for food, suffocating slowly or being cut open while still conscious.

PETA – whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to eat” and which opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview – also notes that the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that 75% of recent infectious diseases affecting humans began in animals. The novel coronavirus originated in a meat market, and influenza viruses have begun in pigs and chickens.

PETA’s letter to Leicester City Council is available here. For more information and a free vegan starter kit, please visit PETA.org.uk.