Kill it Cook it Eat it

Tonight, please tune in to Kill It, Cook It, Eat It on BBC 3 at 10:30 p.m. with meat-eating friends and family members.
PETA Europe is offering free vegetarian starter kits to people who are moved to make positive changes as a result of what they see.

If I had believed McDonald’s advertisements from the ’70s when I was growing up, I would have thought hamburgers grew like fruit on bushes in the Hamburger Patch in the fictional city of McDonaldland. That cartoon-like ad was used to promote McDonald’s foods to children in the United States. The hamburgers were picked by Ronald McDonald and the Hamburglar and were happy to be eaten. Although I grew up in a vegetarian Indian household, I begged my parents to take me to McDonald’s after seeing these commercials. I played in a Hamburglar playground and had my birthday parties and Easter egg hunts with someone dressed as Ronald McDonald. I loved animals as a child, and when I finally realised what is done to gentle cows to get meat, I was horrified and stopped eating it.

A recent study reveals children these days are as ignorant as I was then. Many of today’s 8-year-olds think eggs come from cows. Many do not know pork chops come from pigs and have no idea where yoghurt and cheese come from.

The late Linda McCartney once said, “If slaughterhouses had glass walls, we’d all be vegetarians”. There is truth to this. It was reported that children who saw animals slaughtered for tonight’s episode of Kill It, Cook It, Eat It were reduced to tears. Apparently the scene shows smoke coming out of a pig’s head as she collapses after being electrocuted, and abattoir workers are shown hanging the twitching animal up by her legs and cutting her throat, sending blood gushing to the floor. We should all be horrified at what a meat-centred diet does to other species who, like us, fear pain and death, want to enjoy life, and crave freedom and companionship.

We hope people will realise that what is shown will be the edited, cleanest, kindest version of what animals endure in abattoirs – what actually happens to millions of animals every day is too violent for television. This is what PETA Europe is constantly told when we share our video footage of animals in abattoirs with television stations. What happens at the abattoir is also the end of a miserable journey – from factory-farming abuses to the kill floor.

For any of your friends and family members who want to learn more about how animals suffer in the meat industry or who wish to explore vegetarianism after viewing tonight’s show, please encourage them to log on to http://www.goveg.com/factoryFarming.asp to watch “Meet Your Meat” and order a free vegetarian starter kit.

Best regards,
Poorva Joshipura
Director
PETA UK