Happy Thanksgiving! May you see turkeys (and all animals) as beautiful individuals and choose a cruelty-free holiday meal.
With compassion,
Vegan Outreach
True Thanksgiving Turkey Facts
By Toni Okamoto
While compiling my own list of True Thanksgiving Turkey Facts, I was surprised to find this well-done infograph by Business Insider.
Turkeys live very sad lives before they are slaughtered at the young age 3-5 months old. You can help by choosing compassionate alternatives. Try planning a cruelty-free Thanksgiving with our Ultimate Vegan Thanksgiving Menu!
*It appears there is a mistake in this infographic regarding 1 million turkeys being boiled alive. Based on 2013 USDA slaughter statistics, 614,062 chickens and 16,996 turkeys are drowned in hot water. But the idea is the same — eating turkeys leads to many of them being scalded before drowning.
Double Your Donation!
Are You a Member of the Vegan Club?
Vegan Outreach Cofounder & Executive Director, Jack Norris, has been known to say that “We want a vegan world, not a vegan club.”
That said, as we work toward a vegan world, Vegan Outreach wants to build a really big vegan club!
Become a member of Vegan Outreach today by donating at any of the levels listed on our new website – from $30 per year to become an official Member of the Vegan Club, up to $50,000 to become an Advisor of Vegans and provide high-level guidance to help VO reduce animal suffering. Check out the thank you gifts available at every level. And if somewhere in the middle works best for you, consider becoming a member of the Vegan Police at $300 annually (or $25 a month). At this level, you’ll receive a Vegan Police T-shirt – available only by joining the force!
And what better time to donate than right now, when your donation will be matched dollar-for-dollar! Which brings us to…
Year-End Donation Matching Has Begun!
Your Contribution Now = DOUBLE the Booklets =
DOUBLE the Vegans = DOUBLE the Animals Spared
From now until December 31, when you donate to Vegan Outreach, your impact for the animals will be doubled. A small group of generous donors has stepped up to match every donation dollar-for-dollar up to $155,000! That means your investment in Vegan Outreach will reach twice as many people with messages of compassion – and save twice as many animals from suffering in factory farms!
Your contributions to Vegan Outreach directly increase the number of people who stop eating animals. And today, you can do twice as much! That’s twice as many booklets, twice as many new vegans, and twice as many animals spared!
Thank you to everyone who has already made a year-end gift, and to all our supporters who give automatic monthly and quarterly donations!
VO Leafleters Having Record Year!
2014 has been an amazing year for Vegan Outreach!
Our total booklet distribution has reached 24.4 million since our inception.
As of October 31, we have already sent out 2.6 million booklets for 2014.
Adopt a College leafleters have placed booklets into the hands of 12.2 million students since we started keeping track in the fall of 2003.
This fall, our leafleters are on pace to have the best semester of college leafleting ever! Through November 10, they have given booklets to 845,401 students at 752 schools, well surpassing the previous record year for the same time period (800,161 booklets at 701 schools in fall of 2013).
Thank you to all of Vegan Outreach’s amazing outreach coordinators and volunteers for your hard work, and to all the donors who make it possible!
Here is a sample of the feedback we receive on a daily basis:
I reached 970 students at Florida A&M University today. The take rate was excellent most the day, with many seen holding their booklet a while after they’d gotten it from me. Many students stopped with comments on how interesting they found the literature, and a bunch passing by after said they’d been moved to give up eating pigs, cows, or chickens. Three came back to me after getting the leaflets and said they’d been thinking of going veg, and were surprised finding out how many substitutes there were to choose from now.
One student named Chris has a mom who is vegan, and said he’d been wanting to try it for a while. Another student said she’d been feeling bad about eating animals already, but had no idea how to eat differently. Both got Guide to Cruelty-Free Eating booklets plus veg shopping guides and said they’d be giving veg a go after today.
A student named Kenya [above] came back a few minutes after getting her leaflet, asking what it was about and was also curious how she might get started changing her eating habits. She was really happy hearing about all the alternatives available everywhere now, and asked me for good recommendations on where to get started. She also got extra info; and after hearing what ideas I had on how to transition easily, she said she was going right from our meeting to the supermarket to stock up on all the veg groceries she could find!
A number of other conversations came off really positively through the day too. Really good visit here – I’m hoping we’ll be hearing even more results come next time.
—Yuri Mitzkewich, 10/17/14
