PETA Seeks Life Insurance Policy on Carnivorous New Yorker

Proceeds From Man’s Demise Would Go to Help Animals Raised for Meat

For Immediate Release:
August 2, 2018

Contact:
Audrey Shircliff 202-483-7382

PETA sent a letter today to the New York Life Insurance Company asking to take out a policy on Wally Walters, the New Yorker who recently made headlines by promoting an all-meat diet. In the letter, PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to eat”—lists its intended beneficiaries for the policy: animals who are factory-farmed, trucked, and slaughtered for food.

“A meat-only, high-cholesterol, fiber-free diet is a recipe for an early death by heart attack, stroke, cancer, or other disease related to meat consumption,” says PETA President Ingrid Newkirk. “We hope to either help spare animals being confined in filth, transported in all weather extremes, and slaughtered for meat or inspire this man to help himself by going vegan.”

For more information, please visit PETA.org.

PETA’s letter to New York Life Insurance Company CEO Ted Mathas follows.

August 2, 2018

Theodore A. Mathas, CEO

New York Life Insurance Company

Dear Mr. Mathas,

I’m writing on behalf of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) and our more than 6.5 million members and supporters worldwide to inquire about taking a life insurance policy out on Mr. Wally Walters, a New York City resident who adheres to what is called the “carnivore diet,” meaning all meat and animal-derived products, every meal. Of course, we hope he will change his diet and go vegan and thereby increase his life span. But if he continues eating exclusively meat—from an industry that kills billions of animals per year and devastates the environment as well as human health—he will no doubt succumb prematurely to one of America’s top killers: heart disease, various meat-related types of cancer, a stroke, or so on. We’d like the insurance policy beneficiaries to be the animals we campaign for so hard in order to spare them the horrors of factory farming, transport in all weather, and the slaughterhouse.

Doctors and nutritionists alike agree that a carnivore diet—loaded with cholesterol and fat as well as completely devoid of fiber and essential plant nutrients that vegan foods provide in ample supply—wreaks havoc on human health. And as Dr. Christopher Gardner, a professor of medicine at Stanford University, says, a carnivore diet is “inappropriate for human health, bad for the health of our planet, abusive of the human labour force that handles the preparation of meat, abusive of animal rights and welfare.”

If Mr. Walters objects to our taking out the policy, perhaps he will consider eating vegan food and so spare the lives of hundreds of animals a year and possibly save his own. We would like to discuss the policy options and the rates that New York Life Insurance can offer us at your earliest opportunity. Thank you.

Very truly yours,

Ingrid E. Newkirk

President