World Environment Day Prompts ‘Go Vegan or We All Die’ Warning From PETA India
In honour of World Environment Day (5 June), PETA India is placing billboards in Agra, Bhopal, and Goa with a stark message about what scientists say is the single most effective thing individuals can do to save the planet: go vegan.
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. 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.