Photo by Simon Berger on Unsplash
by Diana O. Potter, VEGWORLD Senior Editor
If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em – and then beat ‘em.
With its recent purchase of stock in four major slaughterhouse/ meatpacking companies, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) has created a way to infiltrate the companies’ operations and influence their decision-making at the corporate level.
The most important decision they want to influence, of course, is the decision to stop their meatpacking operations and prepare and pack plant-based products instead.
Message to Tyson Foods, Smithfield Foods, Maple Leaf Foods, and Hormel: You have been warned….
Given that these companies have to some extent bought into the growing plant-based movement by marketing their own lines, it’s clear that they’ve already seen the future, and it’s plants. PETA hopes to capitalize on this emerging corporate trend to take it to the next level and beyond, until animals are no longer considered food and slaughtered in filthy conditions to make it happen.
The four companies’ current plant-based lines include Raised & Rooted (Tyson), Pure Farmland (Smithfield), Happy Little Plants (Hormel), and Lightlife and Field Roast (Maple Leaf). I know, I know: Kinda nauseating, huh? Okay, some of the names are a bit much (“Look what we’re doing to placate all you little plant-based people out there!”). But the very existence of these products is what gives PETA a strong foot in the door when it comes to changing how these companies view their products and their responsibilities to us and the planet.
Prompted as well by the recent presidential mandate ordering meatpacking workers back on the job despite the many who’ve become infected with COVID-19 and even died from it, PETA sums up its stock-buying strategy:
“This crisis has shown that raising and killing animals in filthy factory-farm conditions and butchering them in ill-regulated slaughterhouses creates breeding grounds for infectious diseases,” says PETA President Ingrid Newkirk. “PETA is pushing Hormel and all other major meat companies to shut down the slaughter lines and switch to plant-based meats that never cause a pandemic.”
The charity also says, “PETA has purchased stock in Hormel – along with other major US and Canadian slaughter companies – in order to attend annual meetings, correspond with other shareholders under Securities and Exchange Commission rules, and directly urge CEOs to convert all slaughterhouses to produce and pack only vegan meats.”
PETA took out a full-page ad in the Washington Post on May 3 that harked back to its long-term campaign of spreading the word about the filth, suffering, and terror among the animals that make up the typical slaughterhouse operation. The headline: “America: It’s Time to Move Away From Meat.” Overall, its message is: “Eat as if everyone’s life depends on it, because it does.”
The ad makes clear the similarity of China’s wet-market slaughter of animals (recall that the COVID-19 pandemic is believed to have started in a wet market in Wuhan, China) to the type of equally filthy and potentially infectious animal slaughter practiced in US slaughterhouses. The evidence is convincing: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has warned that some 75% of recently emerged infectious diseases that affect humans originated in other animals.
There may be a strong reason to expect some success from this latest PETA effort. That’s because they aren’t going into the meatpackers’ boardrooms armed first and foremost with unconditional demands backed by lurid (though accurate) facts. Perhaps recognizing that this long-used approach in other venues hasn’t been as effective as they’d hoped, this time PETA is offering an olive branch in the form of an offer to cover part of the costs related to retraining employees to process plants for food. This cooperative approach will hopefully help the companies feel more comfortable and less defensive working with PETA to bring needed change in their industry.
PETA feels confident in basing its stock-buying campaign on the fact that the vegan food supply is strong, so the only thing at risk when slaughterhouses stop killing animals for food is the industry’s bottom line – which perhaps can be preserved and even improved over time by switching to plant-based products.
Here’s to PETA’s success in this newest effort to save animals from slaughter – and us from eating them. Stay tuned.
I pray every day for the end of the meat industry