‘Time to Go Vegan’ Banners Sought for Floral and Colgate Clocks

PETA Says We Must Face the Facts: Pandemic Prevention Starts on Our Plates

For Immediate Release:
May 7, 2020

Contact:
Megan Wiltsie 202-483-7382

As both Kentucky and Indiana plan to reopen, PETA sent letters this morning asking for permission to place banners around the Floral Clock in Frankfort, Kentucky, and the Colgate Clock in Clarksville, Indiana, that urge everyone to go vegan.

“The clock is ticking on our next pandemic, because as long as animals are confined in their own filth at meat markets, we risk another SARS, MERS, avian flu, or swine flu outbreak,” says PETA President Ingrid Newkirk. “We can’t turn back the clock, but PETA’s banners will encourage each of us to take personal responsibility and help prevent the next global pandemic by going vegan.”

The novel coronavirus originated in a Chinese “wet market,” where live and dead animals are sold for human consumption; swine flu began on a U.S. factory farm; and other influenza viruses have been traced to chickens. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warns that approximately 75% of recently emerged infectious diseases affecting humans originated in other animals.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to eat” and which opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview—recently placed a full-page ad in The Washington Post urging Americans to move away from meat.

PETA’s letter to the development company in charge of the Colgate Clock and its letter to Gov. Andrew Beshear are available upon request. For more information, please visit PETA.org.