A leader of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals told a group of University of Wisconsin students Thursday that abstaining from meat cannot only alleviate global hunger but is also healthier and can save innocent animals from unnecessary suffering.
PETA Vice President of Policy and Government Affairs Bruce Friedrich touted the benefits of a vegan diet, especially relating to famine. According to Friedrich, refraining from eating meat is a more efficient diet system.
He said a tremendous waste of grain and energy is required to feed animals for people to eat. Extra stages of production are required — such as shipping the food, using fossil fuels and growing the crops that people could eat directly.
“The majority of people don’t think of whether what they are eating lines up with their morals,” Friedrich said.
Friedrich cited a United Nations report that says one in six people in the world are starving. With this knowledge, he recounted his own turn towards veganism.
“When I started thinking about the fact that I’m consuming things that require six to 20 times the resources of other things while people are starving to death, it was shocking,” Friedrich said.
The Western world’s consumption of meat has drastic consequences for other countries, he added.
“Increase in the consumption of meat is creating competition for resources between meat-eaters in the West and the global poor,” Friedrich said.
Friedrich went on to say eating meat has other negative implications, such as the ill-treatment of animals bred for human consumption.
He added that large farms use a variety of cruel practices in treating the animals, such as pigs having their scrotums removed and chickens having their beaks seared off — all without any anesthesia.
According to Friedrich, a Gallup poll said 96 percent of Americans want legal protection from cruelty to animals, something he found interesting since “Americans do not seem to agree on anything.” However, the Animal Welfare Act exempts farm animals from this protection.
He added species like chickens and other animals co-evolved with humans.
Animals have the same basic emotional needs and can experience pain like humans, Friedrich said.
UW sophomore Michael Chang attended the event and thought otherwise.
“I disagree with the whole testament that chickens feel emotions and pain on the same level as humans do,” Chang said.
While Chang disagreed with Friedrich on that point, he said the event overall improved his impression of PETA.
Chickens were a main focus of the talk, as tens of millions of chickens die in transport to slaughterhouses, according to Friedrich.
Friedrich said the more unconventional methods PETA sometimes uses can draw people to their website and coax them into calling. Friedrich pointed to a specific instance when he streaked at London’s Buckingham Palace in 2001.
