Should Fundraising Have a Vegan Message?

I get a lot of mail and email asking me for money. While I sometimes find the amount of paper mail I toss into the recycling to be on the wasteful side, all this fundraising is nothing new. In fact, in my younger days it had quite an impact on me.

When I was in teens and bundled up some cash from my babysitting and mailed it to PeTA to stop animal cruelty I was only beginning to consider vegetarianism (something I viewed as a temporary boycott of cruel practices) and had not even heard of veganism. PeTA then bombarded me with mailing after mailing, always asking for more donations, but always insisting that the primary way I could help animals was to become vegan. In fact the message was more or less: if you aren't vegan, you aren't helping animals. And finally that sunk in for me.

Now I get emails from PeTA all the time. I got on this email list by signing online petitions via the PeTA website. I think most of the petitions I signed were on fairly non-controversial issues, like urging prosecutors to hold the abusers of companion animals accountable. So I figure that many of the email addresses trapped through these petitions belong to people who care about animals, especially companion animals, but might not necessarily be vegetarian or vegan.

However the fundraising materials from PeTA no longer mention that we can help animals by not eating them and not eating the eggs and milk that they are forced to produce. I’ve read a lot of them and not one mentions veganism or even vegetarianism.

I recently got this email about pigs, as an example.

From: "Ingrid Newkirk"
To: "Neva"
Subject: Is there something you don't know about pigs?
Date: Wed, 09 Apr 2008 00:31:26 GMT

Dear Neva,

You can help end the abuse of pigs on factory farms today with your gift to PETA.
[http://getactive.peta.org/ct/613Nb2S1dEcc/]

Do you know how pigs in the U.S. live their lives?

Fact #1: In the U.S., more than 97 percent of pigs-smart, social, interesting animals-are raised on factory farms. They spend their entire lives in cramped, filthy warehouses, where they never see the sun or breathe fresh air. Because of their hideous living conditions, more than 70 percent of the pigs have pneumonia by the time they are kicked and prodded onto trucks bound for slaughterhouses. As piglets, they are ripped away from their mothers when they are less than 1 month old and dosed with antibiotics, and they have their tails, teeth, and testicles cut off-all without any pain relief. But even that's not all that they go through.

Breeding sows are imprisoned (there's really no other word for it) in metal gestation crates so small that they can't even turn around or take a single step-many develop painful sores and bruises from being immobilized on a hard surface. Shortly after giving birth, they are forcibly impregnated again. This cycle continues for years until their bodies finally give out and the animals are sent to slaughter. After enduring these hellish conditions for years, squealing pigs are poked, kicked, and dragged onto trucks so that they can be sent to slaughter.

Fact #2: It doesn't have to be this way. PETA is taking on the world's biggest pork producers and reducing the abuse of these poor animals. Your urgent support will help PETA make major changes in this cruel industry and reduce the suffering of millions of farmed pigs.
[http://getactive.peta.org/ct/613Nb2S1dEcc/]

Your generosity today will be used to help PETA reduce the pain and suffering of myriad pigs, cows, fish, chickens, and other animals on massive factory farms-each one an individual who needs help.

Please know this: PETA's work gets results! We've already successfully pressured giants in the industry to make important changes with regard to how they breed, confine, and kill animals:

Following more than 100 PETA demonstrations across North America and negotiations with PETA, Safeway became the first Fortune 500 company to make dramatic improvements in the living and dying conditions of farmed animals, including making unannounced audits of its suppliers, establishing a purchasing preference for suppliers that don't use gestation crates, and immediately purchasing a significant portion of its pig flesh from existing farms that do not confine animals to tiny cages. Safeway credited PETA with "turn[ing] on the light of an issue we need to address."

PETA's influence over its customers, including fast-food chains like McDonald's and Burger King, convinced Smithfield Foods-the largest pig-flesh supplier in the world-to agree to phase out all gestation crates on its company-owned factory farms within a decade. Currently, at any given minute, more than 1 million mother pigs are confined by Smithfield to these hideous crates.

Just a few days later, Maple Leaf Foods, the largest pig flesh-producer in Canada, announced that it would follow suit. Then, almost immediately afterward, another massive pig-flesh supplier-Cargill Foods-agreed to stop using gestation crates on
half its farms immediately.

These decisions significantly reduce the suffering of pigs and have sent shockwaves through the entire meat industry. But we have much more to do, which is why we very much need your help.

PETA's high-profile protests and media outreach, consumer boycotts, and undercover investigations are doing what no one thought was possible: getting the world's worst abusers of animals to clean up their acts. And none of this would be possible without your caring support.

Please make a generous donation to PETA online right now. [http://getactive.peta.org/ct/613Nb2S1dEcc/] Your gift will help sustain our relentless defense of pigs and other animals who are, even as I write this, being abused, exploited, and killed.

Thank you for showing, once again, that all animals deserve our compassion.

Kind regards,

Ingrid E. Newkirk
President

P.S. Pigs are exceptionally intelligent, sensitive animals and are often compared to dogs for being smart, friendly, loyal, and playful. They're also naturally very clean and go out of their way to avoid soiling their living areas, which is impossible in factory-farm conditions. Pigs love to spend hours socializing and exploring their surroundings. Few will ever get the chance to do so. With your support, [http://getactive.peta.org/ct/613Nb2S1dEcc/] we can help stop the very worst abuses of these animals. Thank you for all you do.

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PETA
501 Front St., Norfolk, VA 23510
United States

I’m including the entire email here because I think that many of you, on reading this whole long message, will be as perplexed as I am, as to why PeTA could not manage even one sentence in there urging the reader to stop eating pigs, or to go vegetarian, or even a link to vegan information. But when I clicked on the links that used to be here (copying and pasting seems to have messed them up) they only took me to an on-line donation form urging me support their efforts to fight the worst abuses of factory farming. Further on the donation page I saw no further links that might take me to specifically vegan information. There was a link that took me to the main PeTA webpage and from there I could presumably seek out vegan information. But there wasn’t even a tricky little “click here to learn more about how to help pigs” that linked to vegan BBQ recipes.

I understand the need to raise money, I’m not taking issue with that. However, I think that we always need to keep as on message as possible. A lot of people get these messages, hopefully at least some of those people read them. Since the emails will go out asking for money anyway, shouldn’t there also be a vegan message put in there, somewhere?