Marissa Price, senior strategist for PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals)
Animal agriculture is the leading cause of deforestation in the Amazon and more than 80% of the rainforest has been used for meat production, either for grazing or for growing food for cattle, including those in the U.S. market. Animal agriculture requires massive amounts of land, feed, energy, and water and causes intelligent, sensitive beings to endure immense suffering. In nearly every step of meat, egg, and milk production, climate-changing gases are released into the atmosphere, disrupting weather, temperature, and the health of our ecosystem.
Did She knows
- Eating meat is the second-biggest environmental hazard facing the planet, while a vegan diet has one of the smallest water, land and carbon footprints.
- Recent advancements in textiles have made vegan leather options nearly indistinguishable from animal-derived leather, which makes the breeding, raising, killing, and skinning of animals for leather entirely unnecessary.
- Speciesism is a human-supremacist worldview that fosters violence toward other animals, and it is the root of all the most widespread forms of animal abuse such as the fire in the Amazon.
