Pig Who Escaped Slaughter Named Roger by PETA to Honour Retiring Greggs CEO
Pig Who Escaped Slaughter Named Roger by PETA to Honour Retiring Greggs CEO
London – Today, as CEO Roger Whiteside steps down from his position at the Greggs annual meeting, his namesake will be snuffling in the hay. PETA has named a rescued pig Roger in honour of the executive who oversaw Greggs’ foray into vegan sausage rolls and vegan ham and cheese baguettes. Roger was found on the side of the road after he escaped from an industrial pig farm and now resides at Hillside Animal Sanctuary, where he enjoys playing in his straw, having a good wallow, and spending time with his fellow rescued pigs.
The images of Roger are also available here.
“Like the CEO who shares his name, Roger the pig is a bold and handsome character,” says PETA Director of Vegan Corporate Projects Dawn Carr. “Pigs are individuals who should never be mistaken for bacon. We hope Roger will inspire people to spare other sensitive pigs by choosing delicious, pig-friendly vegan food.”
Twenty thousand people signed PETA’s friendly petition calling on Greggs to offer a vegan sausage roll, and along with Greggs’ Vegan Ham and Cheeze Baguette, the popular treat is a PETA Vegan Food Award winner.
In the UK meat industry, farmers clip or grind down many piglets’ teeth and cut their tails off without any painkillers. After female pigs give birth, they’re confined to farrowing crates so small that they can’t even turn around, let alone fulfil their strong urge to build a nest as they would naturally do. They’re forcibly impregnated over and over again, and each litter of piglets is torn away from them after only a few weeks and transported to fattening pens before being sent to slaughter.
In addition to sparing nearly 200 animals a year a violent and terrifying death, vegans are less likely to suffer from heart disease, diabetes, strokes, obesity, and cancer than meat-eaters are. They also have smaller carbon footprints, as the meat industry is a major producer of the greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to the climate catastrophe.
PETA – whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to eat” – opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview that fosters violence towards other animals. For more information, please visit PETA.org.uk or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.
Contact:
Jennifer White +44 (0) 20 7837 6327; [email protected]
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