Will Joseph Chamberlain Memorial Clock Tower Feature ‘It’s High Time We Went Vegan’ Message?

For Immediate Release:

8 June 2020

Contact:

Sascha Camilli +44 (0) 20 7923 6244; [email protected]

Will Joseph Chamberlain Memorial Clock Tower Feature ‘It’s High Time We Went Vegan’ Message?

Timely Request is Made by PETA to Birmingham University

Birmingham – As the world finds itself in the throes of the COVID-19 crisis, PETA has reached out to Birmingham University asking to place a banner on the Joseph Chamberlain Memorial clock tower. The banner, proclaiming, “It’s High Time We Went Vegan,” would inform residents that the best way to prevent future pandemics is by taking meat, eggs and dairy off our plates.

The Joseph Chamberlain Memorial Clock Tower is a campanile located in Chancellor’s court at the University of Birmingham in the West Midlands of England. It is the tallest free-standing clock tower in the world.

A high-resolution version of the mock-up image is also available here.

“The clock is ticking until the next pandemic – as long as animals are confined amid their own filth at meat markets, we risk another SARS, MERS, avian flu, or swine flu outbreak,” says PETA Director Elisa Allen. “We can’t turn back the clock, but PETA’s banner will encourage everyone to take personal responsibility and help prevent the next global health crisis by going vegan.”

Many cows killed for beef spend their entire lives indoors, never able to graze in fields or move freely. At the abattoir, many are still conscious as they’re skinned. Chickens raised for their flesh may be confined to filthy, windowless sheds with 50,000 or more other frightened birds. Bred to grow much larger than is natural for them, they often suffer from leg deformities, heart failure, and diseases resulting from filthy conditions and intensive crowding. Billions of fish and other sea animals are killed every year for food, suffocating slowly or being cut open while still conscious.

PETA – whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to eat” and which opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview – also notes that the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that 75% of recent infectious diseases affecting humans began in animals. The novel coronavirus originated in a meat market, and influenza viruses have begun in pigs and chickens.

PETA’s letter to  University of Birmingham is available here. For more information and a free vegan starter kit, please visit PETA.org.uk.

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