Kategorie: Animals

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These Vegan Meat Brands Based in Latin America Are Sizzling Successes

Ditching meat and going vegan are the best things you can do for animals, the planet, and your own health, so it makes sense that vegan meat has been on the rise in many Latin American countries. As demand for animal-friendly products increases, companies across the region are rising to the occasion, creating delicious and innovative faux meats packed with the flavors that Latin American cuisines are known for.

These brands are creating vegan versions of proteins, from chorizo and carnitas to burgers and chicken nuggets, that challenge the meat industry, which treats cows, chickens, pigs, fish, and other animals as if they were objects, not individuals:

NotCo

NotCo is a Chilean company that’s using an innovative AI to create vegan options that taste delicious, with unique ingredients like pineapple, coconut, sour cabbage, and seeds. Its products include animal-free chicken, burgers, cutlets, milk, cream, and more. The brand can be found at Burger King and Papa John’s in Chile and on store shelves in other Latin American countries. It’s also expanding its NotBurger, NotChicken, and NotMilk offerings to U.S. markets.

Delike

Mexico-based company Delike makes six flavors of vegan burgers, along with three varieties of tasty veggie “bites.” These meatless patties are made with nutritious whole foods, including brown rice, beans, lentils, oats, and veggies for quick and easy meals.

Felices las Vacas

Felices las Vacas (“Happy Cows”) is an Argentinian brand making vegan meat, dairy, and other tasty foods with respect for animals. Its products include crispy breaded “meat” cutlets, vegan chicken nuggets, plant-based grilled burger patties and cheeses, and more. Its savory patties are also available at Latin America’s first vegan fast-food chain, JOY Burgers & Plants.

Mundo Vegetal

Mundo Vegetal’s crispy tofu Milanese, veggie sticks, falafel bites, and more make it super-simple to add a healthy dose of protein and flavor to any meal. Based in Buenos Aires, Argentina, the brand can be found at various shops and markets around the city.

Benji

Vegan brand Benji is approaching traditional Mexican meats in a nontraditional way, by creating healthy, fat-free carnitas, chorizo, bistec, pollo, chicharron, and more. Its products are made with protein-packed vital wheat gluten, and they’re full of flavorful spices and marinated in sauces for an authentic taste free from cruelty.

The Live Green Co.

The Live Green Co. is a Chilean food tech company that produces vegan meats better for animals and the planet. Its goal is to use ancestral knowledge about native plants to create a healthier and more sustainable alternative to processed foods. Pea protein, chickpeas, flax, lentils, mushrooms, and other whole foods make up its meaty vegan burgers.

Tomorrow Foods

Tech-forward Argentinian company Tomorrow Foods is creating vegan meat, egg, and dairy products with the goal of fighting climate change through animal-free food. Since animal agriculture is one of the leading contributors to the climate catastrophe and other environmental disasters, going vegan makes a lot of sense.

Our free vegan starter kit has tips and information about going vegan. For animals, the environment, and your health, order one today.

The post These Vegan Meat Brands Based in Latin America Are Sizzling Successes appeared first on PETA.

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Judge Denies Feds’ Motion to Dismiss PETA’s Animal Sepsis Tests Lawsuit

A judge for the United States District Court for the District of Maryland yesterday released a decision and order denying the government’s request to dismiss PETA’s first-of-its-kind lawsuit against the National Institutes of Health (NIH), NIH Acting Director Lawrence A. Tabak, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), and HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra. The ruling means that PETA was found eligible to sue, and the lawsuit will proceed.

Filed under the federal Administrative Procedure Act, PETA’s lawsuit alleges that funding sepsis experiments on animals—despite NIH’s own acknowledgment that mice and humans don’t experience the same condition—abuses the agencies’ discretion and violates their obligation to fund research to improve human health and minimize the use of animals in experiments.

“The Court’s decision confirms that PETA will have its day in court and a fighting chance to prove that NIH’s funding of animal experiments to treat human sepsis is illegal, arbitrary, and capricious,” says PETA Senior Vice President Kathy Guillermo. “Sepsis experiments on animals don’t work, and NIH knows this—but continues to pour money into these ineffective, cruel studies.”

Sepsis is the body’s extreme response to infection, affecting one in three patients who die in the hospital and at least 1.7 million Americans in a typical year. Studies on animals have failed to lead to effective treatments. A 2013 landmark study revealed that sepsis doesn’t affect humans as it does mice, and then–NIH Director Francis Collins lamented the “loss of decades of research and billions of dollars” in the development of 150 drugs that successfully treated sepsis in mice but failed in humans. At least 15 peer-reviewed publications over the past 20 years have described how sepsis in humans differs from sepsis in other animals.

Despite this, NIH still directs tens of millions of taxpayer dollars annually to sepsis experiments in which animals are injected with toxins or feces, subjected to invasive surgeries, force-fed harmful bacteria, and/or made to inhale a bacterial “slurry.” The animals endure fever, chills, diarrhea, difficulty breathing, lethargy, disorientation, shock, multiple organ failure, and eventually death.

Prior to taking legal action, PETA compiled a comprehensive scientific and legal report outlining why NIH’s funding of sepsis studies on animals is potentially unlawful as well as scientifically unsound and sent it to the agency. The group is represented by Jonathan R. Mook of DiMuroGinsberg P.C.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to experiment on”—opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information about PETA’s investigative newsgathering and reporting, please visit PETA.org, listen to The PETA Podcast, or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.

The post Judge Denies Feds’ Motion to Dismiss PETA’s Animal Sepsis Tests Lawsuit appeared first on PETA.

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This Cow Who Escaped From a Brooklyn Slaughterhouse Will Live in Peace at a Sanctuary

After escaping from a slaughterhouse and running through the streets of Brooklyn, a 4-month-old cow will now live in peace at a New Jersey sanctuary.

Video footage of the calf roaming the city inspired a public outcry for the slaughterhouse to give her a chance at life.

The facility surrendered her to Skylands Animal Sanctuary & Rescue, where she will have the opportunity to graze on open pastures, roam freely, and do whatever else she likes.

Did You Know?

Cows are extremely intelligent and have been known to go extraordinary lengths to escape from slaughterhouses. Emily the cow became an international celebrity when she survived for several weeks in the woods, following her daring escape from a Massachusetts slaughterhouse. A statue was even erected in her honor.

Where Is the Public Outcry for the Countless Others Who Suffer Every Day in the Meat and Dairy Industries?

A happy ending for this Brooklyn calf is certainly something worth celebrating, but the countless other animals who are suffering on farms and in slaughterhouses aren’t so lucky. Each year, more than 29 million cows in the U.S. alone are exploited and killed in the meat and dairy industries.

Dairy farms repeatedly artificially impregnate mother cows and then tear their babies away from them when they’re just a day old. When mother cows can no longer produce milk, they’re sent to slaughterhouses to be killed for their flesh. There, cows are hung upside down before their throats are slit—often while they’re still conscious. These animals deserve to be free, too.

Here’s How YOU Can Help Cows

By going vegan, you can save nearly 200 animals per year. Start sparing animals today by making the compassionate switch:

The post This Cow Who Escaped From a Brooklyn Slaughterhouse Will Live in Peace at a Sanctuary appeared first on PETA.

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Starbucks to Be Pummeled by PETA at Annual Meeting: Only Greenwashing Allows Vegan Milk Surcharge

At Starbucks’ annual meeting tomorrow, three shareholders and a PETA representative will fire a barrage of questions at the company, including at its new CEO, Laxman Narasimhan, urging the Seattle-based “environmentally conscientious” coffee purveyor to eliminate the surcharge it imposes on eco- and animal-friendly plant milks even though animal agriculture harms the environment, including via cows’ output of greenhouse gases. They’ll point out that Starbucks—which perpetuates immense cruelty to cows and their calves, who are separated so that the milk the mothers produce for their babies can be sold—lags behind others in the coffee industry and earns the ire of Gen Z and lactose-intolerant populations by pricing vegan milks higher than cow’s milk, even after admitting that dairy is the biggest contributor to its carbon footprint and yet having done nothing about it.

PETA supporters and activists with Animal Rights Initiative will also descend on Starbucks’ headquarters in downtown Seattle at the start of the meeting to make their position known. During the meeting, PETA will also present its shareholder resolution calling on Starbucks to commission a report examining whether or not the company is actually losing sales and hurting its reputation via its unpopular upcharge for vegan milks.

“Milking customers up to 90 cents more for eco- and animal-friendly vegan milks is indefensible, cruel, and environmentally harmful,” says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. “PETA and other concerned investors are going full steam ahead in urging Starbucks to ditch this shameless surcharge.”

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to eat or abuse in any other way”—opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETA.org, listen to The PETA Podcast, or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.

The full shareholder questions follow.

Question #1

I’ve been a loyal Starbucks customer for years. Back in the day, Starbucks was an industry trailblazer as one of the first national coffee chains to offer soy milk. When you added coconut and almond milk, I felt that Starbucks was truly listening to its customers. But times have changed. Now virtually every neighborhood café offers oat milk, and more and more have stopped charging extra for oat, almond, soy, and other vegan milks. As someone who regularly travels abroad, I’ve also noticed that many Starbucks stores around the world—such as those in France, the U.K., and now Germany—have dropped the vegan upcharge. But here in the U.S., Starbucks is still charging up to 90 cents extra for vegan milks! I now feel that Starbucks has shifted from responding to its dairy-averse customers to exploiting us. I would like to ask this: When will Starbucks return to the values that made me an investor by listening to its customers, leading the coffee industry instead of lagging behind, and dropping the upcharge on vegan milks?

Question #2

I have a question for corporate management. As someone who lives in Seattle, I’ve been proud to watch Starbucks share our coffee culture with the world. But I’m also deeply concerned about climate change and the effect my choices have on our beautiful planet. I’ve read that coffee chains Blue Bottle and Stumptown Roasters have made oat milk the default for all coffee beverages because of dairy’s high carbon footprint. LinkedIn’s office tower in San Francisco also made oat milk the default at its coffee bar, and that move cut its carbon footprint in half! You keep telling us that Starbucks cares about the environment, but your actions say otherwise. My question is this: Since Starbucks has admitted that dairy is the biggest contributor to the company’s carbon footprint and is a major factor in climate change, why doesn’t Starbucks institute a dairy surcharge or, even better, drop dairy altogether? 

Question #3

I consider myself a savvy investor, but lately, Starbucks has me concerned. I recently read about a study that found that almost half of Gen Z is ashamed to order dairy and that nearly 60% plan to give it up this year! This did not surprise me. It’s impossible not to notice the explosive popularity of oat milk lattes, coconut-based ice creams, and other dairy-free options at coffee shops, restaurants, and grocery stores. I was shocked, however, to learn that Starbucks has partnered with Arla, the dairy cooperative that conducted the study on Gen Z and dairy. This partnership makes no sense whatsoever. Today’s young people are passionate and outspoken. They vote with their wallets, they blast their opinions on social media, and they are quick to cancel anyone or anything that doesn’t align with their values. Gen Z’s estimated spending power is over $360 billion, and the consumption of dairy in the U.S. has been steadily declining since the 1970s. In order to remain financially and socially relevant, Starbucks should be dropping dairy, not supporting it. Here is my question: Given Gen Z’s aversion to dairy, why doesn’t Starbucks make vegan milk the default option instead of charging more for it?

Question #4, PETA

I have a question on behalf of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and our millions of members and supporters. Nearly 10 million cows in the U.S. alone are forced to endure a lifetime of misery for dairy every year. The typical cow spends her entire life confined to a filthy concrete-floored enclosure. When she is only 4 to 5 years old—utterly worn out from a relentless cycle of forced impregnation, birth, and round-the-clock milking—she’ll be crammed onto a truck without food or water, sent to a slaughterhouse, shot in the head with a captive-bolt gun that may or may not stun her, hung up by her legs, slashed across the neck, and left to bleed to death.

Starbucks aspires to do everything “through the lens of humanity.” Members of the board, use that same lens to look at the mistreatment of cows used for dairy. Surely not one of you would agree that endorsing such cruelty could “inspire and nurture the human spirit,” which Starbucks proudly claims is its mission. We ask you this: Knowing that dairy is the product of immense suffering, environmental destruction, and dietary racism, how do you justify supporting and even actively promoting its consumption by continuing to impose an “ethical tax” on vegan milks?

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