For Immediate Release:
January 27, 2005
Contact:
Chris Link 757-622-7382
Southern Pines, N.C. — PETA had hoped to place its brand-new billboard–showing a middle-aged couple next to the tagline “Meat Causes Cancer Ö Go Vegetarian”–in Southern Pines in time for the North Carolina Meat Processors Association Conference next week, but it was rejected by the area–s outdoor advertising company, despite the fact that the ad has been displayed in Baltimore, Houston, and Trenton, N.J. PETA wanted to remind residents that “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”
Studies published in the American Journal of Gastroenterology, the International Journal of Cancer, the American Journal of Epidemiology, and many other medical periodicals provide evidence that eating meat increases a person–s risk of developing cancer and that a diet based on grains, fruits, and vegetables significantly decreases that risk. Consumption of meat and other animal products has also been linked to heart disease, strokes, obesity, and diabetes, as well as life-threatening bacterial infections such as salmonella, E. coli, and listeria. And of course, the best way to avoid contracting the human form of mad cow disease is to adopt a humane, environmentally friendly, healthful vegetarian diet.

Humans– consumption of meat is hazardous to animals– health, too. Animals on factory farms are subjected to mutilations and other forms of abuse from which cats and dogs are legally protected. Pigs are confined to concrete-floored stalls and have their tails cut off–and males suffer the additional abuse of castration–without anesthetics. Chickens are jam-packed into wire cages, and their sensitive beaks are sliced off so that they can–t peck each other from stress. Newborn calves are torn from their mothers and relegated to tiny, dark “veal crates.”
“It–s a lot easier–and cheaper–to prevent cancer than to treat it, simply by adopting a healthy, humane, vegetarian diet,” says PETA–s Vegan Campaign Director Bruce Friedrich. “Within 10 years, meat moguls will be in the dock, just as tobacco executives were a few years ago.”
A copy of the billboard ad follows. For more information, please visit GoVeg.com.