University of York Memorial for Long Boi Prompts PETA’s Plea: Extend Empathy to All Birds!
25 Oct 2024
University of York Memorial for Long Boi Prompts PETA’s Plea: Extend Empathy to All Birds!
York, North Yorkshire – After the University of York unveiled a statue commemorating Long Boi – a duck on campus who went viral for his tall stature and became an unofficial mascot of the institution before his presumed death last year – PETA sent a letter to chancellor Dr Heather Melville urging her to honour the duck’s legacy by removing the flesh of his fellow birds from all campus menus. The group also offered to install a vegan starter kit stand next to the new statue to help students pay a meaningful tribute to “His Löngthiness” by refusing to cut short the lives of birds or other animals.
“Just like Long Boi, every bird is an individual with a unique personality who experiences love, joy, pain, and fear and doesn’t want to be hacked to bits for their flesh any more than we would,” says PETA Vice President of Programmes Elisa Allen. “PETA is urging the University of York to honour Long Boi’s memory by sparing a thought for all of his feathered brethren and leaving birds off the menu.”
In the meat industry, ducks, geese, chickens, turkeys, and other birds are confined by the tens of thousands to severely crowded, filthy sheds and bred to grow such unnaturally large upper bodies that their legs often become crippled under the weight. At slaughterhouses, many of the birds are inadequately stunned before their throats are cut – so they’re often still conscious when they’re dumped into defeathering tanks full of scalding-hot water. In addition to the immense cruelty, raising and killing birds and other animals for their flesh is catastrophic for the environment and creates breeding grounds for zoonotic diseases like avian flu.
Each person who goes vegan spares hundreds of animals – including birds – a violent death every year, dramatically shrinks their food-related carbon footprint, and slashes their risk of suffering from heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and strokes.
PETA – whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to eat” – opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information about PETA’s investigative newsgathering and reporting, please visit PETA.org.uk or follow the group on Facebook, X, TikTok, or Instagram.
Contact:
Lucy Watson +44 (0) 20 7837 6327; [email protected]
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