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Vegan actor Emmett J Scanlan has teamed up with animal rights charity PETA to make an advocacy video.
Scanlan, who has appeared in Butterfly, Krypton, and Peaky Blinders – encourages people to ‘live vegan’ – reminding everyone that ‘we are all animals’.
“I’m convinced that if we eat meat, we’re ingesting bad karma, but as a by-product of that, by not eating meat, I’m helping the environment,” Scanlan said in the video interview. “It’s healthier for me. I know, I believe, I feel stronger than I’ve ever felt before […]. More importantly than anything, I feel happy that I’m on this path.”
Humane slaughter
Speaking about his own vegan journey, Scanlan said: “I had kind of justified to myself that the meat I ate as organic meat, that the meat I ate was humane slaughter, whatever the f*** that means. And I continued on my path.”
This changed when he found his wife crying at her laptop one night. “On the laptop was a YouTube video by this animal activist and through her tears she was saying, ‘I don’t understand why the world is so mean’ so I watched it for 34 minutes and then I turned to my wife and said, ‘Baby, I’m with you.’
“Social media is forcing us out of our slumber. There’s nowhere to f***ing hide now. You have to see it. You have to educate yourself. And I think if you raise awareness, then you allow, inside of yourself, to blossom understanding and compassion, which is what I think is the true essence of what human beings are.”
Vegan actor Emmett J Scanlan talks about ditching animal products
Vegan celebrities
Scanlan’s video follows a recent collaboration between PETA and Game of Thrones star Jerome Flynn, who also questioned the ‘humane slaughter’ myth.
“Virtually none of the intelligent, sensitive animals raised for food in Britain or overseas will ever be allowed to breathe fresh air, feel the warmth of the sun on their backs, root in the soil, peck around in the grass, or do anything else that would make their lives natural or worth living at all,” Flynn said in the video.
“Their lives are miserable from the moment they are born until the day the lorries arrive to take them to slaughter. Yes, at the end of all this suffering, they are hauled off to the abattoir, where the sights and smells of blood and entrails are stomach-turning.”
