Game On! UT-Austin Senior Takes on Whole Foods’ ‘Humane Washing’
For Immediate Release:
November 21, 2022
Contact:
Lauren Kent 202-483-7382
Fed up with Whole Foods for marketing the flesh of pigs who were raised in filth and killed in terror as “humane,” University of Texas–Austin senior Zoey Claxton has developed a gripping new video game, Whole Lotta Lies, which gives players a pig’s-eye view of life and death in the meat industry.
In the game, players direct a pig named Pixie as she tries to escape from a worker who attempts to tag her ear; avoid succumbing to illness in a crowded, filthy pen; and evade a slaughterhouse-bound truck—all depictions of practices accepted by Whole Foods’ standards, which allow for many animals to suffer and die before they ever make it to slaughter. Claxton—the UT-Austin hub organizer of Students Opposing Speciesism (SOS), a PETA-backed, youth-led movement for animal liberation—notes that even if 150 out of every 1,000 piglets die on a breeding farm, it’s permitted under Whole Foods’ standards.
“Whole Foods and other supermarkets use meaningless labels to try to dupe customers into feeling better about buying meat and dairy, which are produced by causing animals to suffer and die terrifying deaths in slaughterhouses,” says Claxton. “I’m proud to cap off my time at UT-Austin with this game, which gives people a glimpse of why the only humane meal is a vegan one.”
Claxton will graduate with a degree in advertising in December. This past summer as a PETA intern, she traveled across Pennsylvania to attend rallies outside district attorneys’ offices, calling for charges to be filed against the workers caught beating, stomping on, kicking, throwing, and trying to break the necks of terrified turkeys in PETA’s undercover investigation into one of Whole Foods’ “humane” former suppliers. Following her efforts, 12 former workers were charged with a total of 141 counts of cruelty to animals—the largest number of charges in any factory-farmed animal case in U.S. history.
This semester, Claxton has organized local SOS protests calling on Starbucks to drop its upcharge on vegan milks, Formula 1’s owner to cut ties with the deadly Iditarod dog-sled race, and visitors to stay away from Austin Aquarium, a sleazy indoor petting zoo and strip mall aquarium where eyewitnesses have reported 27 separate incidents in which lemurs have bitten customers and staff.
SOS shares PETA’s motto: “Animals are not ours to experiment on, eat, wear, use for entertainment, or abuse in any other way.” For more information, please visit SOS.PETA.org or follow SOS on Instagram.