Kat Graham Urges Fans to Help End Speciesism and Violence By Going Vegan

Vampire Diaries Star Visits a Local Farm Sanctuary and Invokes Martin Luther King Jr. in New PETA Video

For Immediate Release:
September 19, 2019

Contact:
Moira Colley 202-483-7382

“Do you want a less violent world? Then what are you going to do about it?” That’s what Kat Graham asks in a new video for PETA that shows her visiting rescued sheep, cows, pigs, and other animals at Full Circle Farm Sanctuary, near her hometown of Atlanta. Graham’s partner—also a Vampire Diaries alum—cinematographer Darren Genet, shot and directed the video.

“Dr. Martin Luther King said, ‘He who passively accepts evil is as much involved as he who helps to perpetrate it,’” Graham says in the video. “If you are opposed to abuse, torture, oppression, exploitation, child abuse, sexual assault, murder, you don’t pay for it. Let’s live kindly. Peacefully. Go vegan.”

The video reveals the many ways speciesism—the false notion that humans are superior to other species and that other animals are nothing more than commodities to use and abuse at will—perpetuates cruelty. Cows are forcibly inseminated on dairy farms, sheep are punched in the face in shearing sheds, chimpanzees are stolen from their mothers and experimented on in laboratories, chickens’ throats are slit on slaughterhouse conveyor belts, and tigers used in circuses are confined to small barren cages.

In addition to saving the lives of nearly 200 animals a year, every person who goes vegan dramatically reduces their carbon footprint and helps combat deforestation: More than 90% of the Amazon rainforest land that’s been cleared since 1970 is used for meat production, either for grazing or for growing food for cattle, including those in the U.S. market.

Graham is part of a growing list of celebrities—including Peter Dinklage, Paul McCartney, Madelaine Petsch, Joaquin Phoenix, Natalie Portman, Maggie Q, RZA, Alicia Silverstone, Taraji P. Henson, and Forest Whitaker—who’ve teamed up with PETA to promote its motto, which reads, “Animals are not ours to experiment on, eat, wear, use for entertainment, or abuse in any other way.” 

For more information, please visit PETA.org.