PETA Foundation Urges Eton To Adopt Meat-Free Mondays In Wake Of Swine Flu Outbreak

For Immediate Release:
4 June 2009

Contact:
Sam Glover 020 7357 9229 ext 229; [email protected]

Windsor – Following news of a swine flu outbreak at Eton College, the PETA Foundation, a charitable affiliate of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) Europe, sent a letter to the school’s headmaster, A R M Little, suggesting that the school adopt “Meat-Free Mondays” as a way to boost student health and fight against factory farms, which act as incubators for deadly diseases such as swine flu and avian flu.

The PETA Foundation points out that reducing meat consumption can also help protect people from heart disease, certain types of cancer (particularly cancers of the colon and breast) and diabetes and that school is a good place to develop healthy eating habits.

Factory-farmed animals are invariably stressed and are often disease-ridden as a result of being crammed into waste-filled sheds, which can be breeding grounds for new strains of dangerous bacteria and viruses. Pigs and other animals on factory farms are fed a steady diet of drugs to keep them alive in these unsanitary, stressful conditions, increasing the chance that drug-resistant superbugs will develop. Hans-Gerhard Wagner, a senior officer with the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation, has called the intensive industrial farming of livestock an “opportunity for emerging disease”.

Meat, dairy products and eggs – all of which are packed with cholesterol and saturated fat – are major culprits in the obesity epidemic, which contributes to the UK’s top killer diseases: heart attacks, strokes, diabetes and cancer. Meat-eaters are four times more likely to be obese than vegetarians are and are 10 times more likely to suffer from heart disease.

“Not only does factory-farm filth threaten the well-being of cows, pigs and chickens, it also endangers everyone on the planet”, says PETA Foundation Charity Manager Suzanne Barnard. “Eton could help protect students’ health both today and into the future by adopting ‘Meat-Free Mondays’.”

The PETA Foundation’s letter to Eton is available upon request. For more information, please visit PETA.org.uk