Ahead of World Environment Day, Children Dressed as Chicks and Calves Make Vegan Plea for the Planet
Just in time for World Environment Day (5 June), a brigade of young PETA India supporters wearing chick and calf costumes gathered around a giant globe in Bengaluru. Their message? Consider going vegan to save the planet for their future.
The United Nations states that animal agriculture is responsible for nearly a fifth of human-induced greenhouse gas emissions and that raising animals for food is “one of the top two or three most significant contributors to the most serious environmental problems, at every scale from local to global”. The production of meat and dairy, including curd and cheese, accounts for about 60% of all food-related greenhouse gas emissions. Scientists have discovered that going vegan is the single most effective thing anyone can do to help save the planet. Researchers at the University of Oxford found that not consuming meat and dairy can reduce an individual’s carbon footprint from food by up to 73% and that a global switch to vegan eating could save up to 8 million human lives by 2050 and reduce greenhouse gas emissions by two-thirds.
Eating vegan spares animals immense suffering, including in the dairy and egg industries, in which male calves and chicks are commonly killed since they cannot produce milk or eggs. Unwanted chicks are killed by gruesome methods such as through drowning, burning, or crushing. Globally, an estimated 92.2 billion land animals alone are slaughtered every year, and most of them are raised in extreme confinement. Chickens exploited for their eggs are kept in cages so small they can’t spread their wings, male piglets are castrated without painkillers, and fish are yanked out of the water and crushed, suffocated, or cut open and gutted, all while they’re still conscious.
