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Paul McCartney says his birthday wish is for everyone to stop eating animals.
The iconic musician, who will celebrate his 78th birthday on June 18, made the plea via a guest blog he wrote for vegan charity PETA. In the post, he calls on fans to watch the famous video he filmed with PETA almost 10 years ago, titled Glass Walls.
The video, which has been viewed by more than 20 million people, shows that ‘chickens and turkeys are confined to filthy sheds by the tens of thousands, pigs are often conscious while their throats are cut, and fish are dragged out of their marine homes and left to suffocate on the decks of fishing boats’.
‘Peace on Earth’
“All I’ve ever wanted for my birthday is peace on Earth – including for animals,” McCartney said. “That’s why this year, I’m urging fans to watch a video I hosted for PETA, titled ‘Glass Walls’. We called it that because if slaughterhouses had glass walls, who would want to eat meat?
“The video debuted exactly 10 years ago. Since then, the public has finally got a peek at what happens inside the meat trade, and the demand for vegan food is sky-high.
“Whether you’re worried about diseases that spring from slaughterhouses, the animals who suffer terribly and needlessly, or the catastrophic impact of the meat industry on our environment, please watch this short video and share it with your friends. Thank you.”
COVID-19
According to PETA, the video serves as a timely reminder of the dangers posed by animal use, as the world is in the grips of the COVID-19 pandemic, a zoonotic disease which is widely believed to originated from a wet market in Wuhan, China.
McCartney spoke about wet markets earlier this year, branding them ‘medieval’ and calling for them to be banned. According to the Guardian, McCartney told US radio host Howard Stern: “I really hope that this will mean the Chinese government says, ‘OK guys, we have really got to get super hygienic around here.’ Let’s face it, it is a little bit medieval eating bats.
“It wouldn’t be so bad if this is the only thing it seems like you can blame on those wet markets. It seems like Sars, avian flu, all sorts of other stuff that has afflicted us … and what’s it for? For these quite medieval practices. They need to clean up their act. This may lead to [change]. If this doesn’t, I don’t know what will…when you’ve got the obscenity of some of the stuff that’s going on there and what comes out of it, they might as well be letting off atomic bombs. It’s affecting the whole world.
“I understand that part of it is going to be: people have done it forever, this is the way we do things. But they did slavery forever, too. You’ve got to change things at some point.”
