Hampton Roads Restaurants Embrace ‘ThanksVegan’

PETA Heads Community Campaign With ‘Go Vegan’ Message Now Emblazoned on the Roof of Its Norfolk Headquarters

For Immediate Release:
November 17, 2020

Contact:
Brooke Rossi 202-483-7382

Vegan foods are selling like hotcakes, restaurants celebrated Veganuary, and now Thanksgiving is fast morphing into “ThanksVegan”—and PETA is encouraging Hampton Roads eateries to hop on the trend by displaying the group’s pro-turkey sign and sharing it online with the hashtag #ThanksVegan. PETA’s “Go Vegan” message on the roof of its headquarters will also encourage people going home for the holidays via the flight path over the building to give turkeys a reason to be thankful and celebrate with a vegan feast.

“PETA is happy to help local eateries promote delicious vegan options that leave gentle birds off the holiday table,” says PETA President Ingrid Newkirk. “When it comes to having feelings, loving their families, and valuing their lives, turkeys are individuals, just as much as humans are.”

Turkeys are now understood to be caring parents, good flyers, and clever, spirited explorers who can live up to 10 years in nature, while those raised for food are normally slaughtered when they’re between 12 and 26 weeks old—and more than 46 million are killed each year for Thanksgiving alone. The young birds are hung by their feet from metal shackles and dragged through an electrified bath, and they’re often still conscious when their throats are slit and they’re dumped into scalding-hot defeathering tanks.

As part of its #ThanksVegan campaign, PETA is also partnering with Key Food, Gelson’s Markets, Associated Supermarket Group, MOM’s Organic Market, and Price Chopper to promote their ready-to-roast vegan turkeys and other animal-free options; protesting outside turkey slaughterhouses; placing pro-turkey billboards across the country; and running its “Grace” ad, in which a little girl makes some pointed comments while saying grace at the dinner table.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to eat” and which opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview—offers a ThanksVegan recipe guide. For more information, please visit PETA.org or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.

The restaurants participating in PETA’s #ThanksVegan campaign include Kahiau’s Bakery and Cafe in Virginia Beach, Naomi Vegan Meets in Chesapeake, and Granby Bistro & Deli, Rajput Indian Cuisine, Bangkok Garden, Kotobuki Japanese Restaurant, Mr. Shawarma, Yorgo’s Bageldashery, Pelon’s Baja Grill, and Your Pie in Norfolk as well as Ben’s Chili Bowl, Busboys and Poets, Equinox, and Pow Pow in Washington, D.C.