'India: It's Time to Move Away From Meat'

New Delhi

As the world continues to experience the deadly effects of COVID-19, PETA India has urged everyone to help stop another pandemic saying "India: It's Time to Move Away From Meat".

In a statement, the animal rights organisation said it is overwhelmingly believed that coronavirus has jumped the species barrier from infected animals to humans at a live-animal market in China.

"The PETA India is urging everyone to help stop another pandemic by running ads in newspapers that proclaim 'India: It's Time to Move Away From Meat'," it said on Friday.

The advertisement points out that India's live-animal markets, factory farms, and slaughterhouses are as filthy as China's "wet markets", their floors covered with blood, urine, faeces, and offal and that no one needs to eat meat.

"Consuming It not only causes animal suffering but also comes back to bite consumers in the form of heart disease, cancer, strokes, high blood pressure, diabetes, and obesity. The ads, which feature a sickly chicken lying face down on an Indian Poultry farm, urge, "Eat as if Everyone's Life Depends on It, Because It Does."

Veterinarian and PETA India CEO Manilal Valliyate said many people feel powerless in the face of this health crisis, but everyone has control over what, or who, is on their plates.

"PETA India stands ready with free vegan starter kits, tips, and recipes to help people stay healthy and try to prevent the next pandemic," Valliyate said.

At the Chinese market where the novel coronavirus is believed to have first infected humans through bats or possibly pangolins, live and dead animals were sold for human consumption, PETA India said.

"SARS first infected humans at a similar Chinese live-animal market. Swine flu, which killed up to 5,75,000 people worldwide in the first year it circulated alone, is considered to have originated in US factory farms. Meanwhile, bird flu, which has a 60 per cent mortality rate, routinely plagues chicken farms.

"The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warns that approximately 75 per cent of recently emerged infectious diseases affecting humans originated in other animals."

The ads features a chicken because chickens used for meat in India and around the world are now purposely bred to grow so large so fast that they often have trouble standing and walking and even have heart failure when they're just a few weeks old.

"On today's factory farms, they're confined to crowded, filthy sheds amidst their own waste. The ammonia from their combined waste often causes sores, burns, and ulcers on their bodies, and when combined with the dust from their feathers and skin, the birds regularly experience respiratory and eye problems."