PETA Slams Scottish School with Child Indoctrination Citation for Cruel “Meatbox Challenge”

3 October 2025

PETA Slams Scottish School with Child Indoctrination Citation for Cruel “Meatbox Challenge”

Thornhill, Dumfries and Galloway – After learning that Wallace Hall Academy is piloting a “meatbox challenge” as part of its Young Agri Leader programme, which encourages children to buy and sell lambs for their flesh, PETA sent a letter to Head Teacher Barry Graham slapping the school with a citation for indoctrinating children. PETA is urging the school to teach children a lesson in compassion by creating a “plantbox challenge” that champions kind, sustainable plant farming.

“Like all children, Wallace Hall Academy’s students have a natural empathy towards animals, and encouraging them to treat living, sensitive individuals as commodities to be killed for profit is indoctrinating them into a violent farming system,” says PETA Vice President of Vegan Corporate Projects Dawn Carr. “PETA is urging the school to take cruelty off the curriculum and inspire the next generation of farmers to grow sustainable Scottish plants like oats and fava beans that are kind to animals, the planet and our health.”

Every year, millions of lambs bred for their flesh die from exposure, malnutrition, or disease within days of birth, and survivors are typically slaughtered when they’re just 10 weeks old. During their short lives, they may undergo painful mutilations, such as tail-docking and castration, without painkillers. Before they end up on someone’s plate, lambs are packed onto lorries, sometimes without food or water, for gruelling journeys to an abattoir, and some are still conscious and aware as workers cut their throats.

Raising animals for food is a leading cause of environmental destruction, as it requires massive amounts of land, food, energy, and water and emits huge quantities of greenhouse gases. The United Nations encourages a global shift towards vegan eating to combat the worst effects of climate change.

Each person who goes vegan spares hundreds of sheep and other animals every year a violent death and slashes their own risk of suffering from heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and strokes. PETA’s free vegan starter kit can help those looking to make the switch.

PETA – whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to eat” – points out that Every Animal Is Someone and offers free Empathy Kits. For more information, please visit PETA.org.uk or follow PETA on Facebook, X, TikTok, or Instagram.

Contact:

Lucy Watson +44 (0) 20 7837 6327; [email protected]

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