PETA is urging President Vong Man Hung to lead Macau and the world in doing
their share in the charge against climate change and environmental
destruction by going vegetarian and advocating the same.
In the letter, PETA makes the following points:

* A recent UN report determined that raising animals for food
generates almost 40 per cent more greenhouse-gas emissions than all the
cars, trucks, ships and planes in the world combined. The report went on to
say that the meat industry is "one of the . most significant contributors to
the most serious environmental problems, at every scale from local to
global" and recommends that the meat industry "be a major policy focus when
dealing with problems of land degradation, climate change and air pollution,
water shortage and water pollution, and loss of biodiversity".

* Researchers at the University of Chicago in the US concluded that
switching from a meat-based diet to a vegan diet does more to fight against
climate change than switching from a standard car to a hybrid does.

* Waste, antibiotics and pesticides from factory farms and
slaughterhouses contaminate water sources. Farmed animals produce 13 billion
metric tonnes of excrement a year – that's 48 times as much as the world's
human population produces.

* Satisfying the world's appetite for animal flesh requires fuel to
produce fertiliser for the crops that are fed to animals, petrol to run the
trucks that take the animals to slaughter, electricity to freeze their
carcasses and much more. It takes more than 10 times as much fossil fuel to
make one calorie of animal protein as it does to make one calorie of plant
protein.

"The best thing that any of us can do to for our health, for animals and for
the environment is to go vegetarian", says PETA Director Jason Baker. "It's
time to move from the Kyoto Protocol to the vegetarian protocol. The best
and easiest way for President Vong Man Hung to show that she's committed to
combating climate change is to kick the meat habit."