Animal Protection Organizations Promote a Compassionate Lifestyle at Today’s Great American Meatout

Portland Ore.—Today, In Defense of Animals (IDA) will join student organizers of Vegans for Animals Advocacy (VAA), a new Portland State University (PSU) campus club, and other organizations for an upbeat event aimed at helping students kick the meat habit.

What: Great American Meatout
Where: Portland State University, Park Blocks
When: Thursday, March 20, 10 am-2 pm

Visitors to the Park Blocks at PSU will be greeted by raucous cheers from vegan members of the Radical Cheerleaders troop, free samples of yummy vegan fare, and education about the health, environmental, and humane reasons to go vegan. Volunteers from local organizations including IDA, Northwest Veg, Portland Animal Defense League, and Action for Animals will be on hand to answer students’ questions about how lifestyles and diet impact our quality of life, and they’ll offer recipes and support to students who want to make a change.

“Most people don’t realize that cattle-rearing generates more global warming greenhouse gases, as measured in CO2 equivalent, than all the transportation exhaust around the world.” according to Matt Rossell, IDA’s NW Outreach Coordinator. “The compassionate, vegan lifestyle is becoming increasingly more attractive to young people who care about the impact they make on the earth and animals.”

"Our campus is becoming one of the greenest in the nation and I think my fellow students are unaware how much eating meat effects our environment,” added VAA’s Elsbeth Seymour. “One person kicking the meat habit can save over 100 lives and eliminate over 2 tons of carbon a year! What better day to start fresh than the first day of spring?"

March marks the 24th annual observance of the Great American Meatout, the world’s largest annual grassroots diet education campaign. Animal and consumer protection advocates in a thousand communities in all 50 states and two dozen other countries welcome spring with educational events asking their friends and neighbors to “kick the meat habit and to explore a healthy, nonviolent plant-based diet.”

Food is being donated by Papa G's, Food Fight and Sweet Pea Bakery.