Vegans gear up for bear hugs

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Hug if you care for animals. If you are wondering what’s hugging got to do with saving animals then probably you still have not heard of the “Hug A Vegetarian Day”, a day dedicated to vegetarians. This year PETA India will celebrate this day on September 28 to raise awareness about vegetarianism before October, the Vegetarian Awareness Month.

“This campaign gives people a chance to celebrate their choice to be vegetarian — a decision which saves the lives of more than 100 animals every year,” informs Bhuvaneshwari Gupta, nutritionist and campaign coordinator for PETA, India.
She says, “It is also a light-hearted and fun way for vegetarians and vegans across the country to help people consider that animals do not want to die for a fleeting moment of taste. People are realising that cows, chicken, pigs and other animals killed for food also feel pain and fear, and suffer just like the dogs and cats they share their home with.”
She adds, “We have written to restaurants in all major cities including Delhi asking them to put up PETA’s ‘we are vegan friendly’ stickers on their windowpanes and to mark all vegan food items on their menu with a symbol similar to the green dot which is currently used to mark vegetarian foods. This new vegan symbol suggested by us is a similar green dot with a ‘V’ in the centre.”
In Delhi, Gaurav Jain, a volunteer and charted accountant, will be organsing meet-ups to promote this day.
He informs, “We will be encouraging Delhiites to give all of the vegetarians they know a great big hug on this day. We are also planning to organise a vegetarian hugging meet-up in CP, where our volunteers will be present in animal costumes and they’ll hug people. These volunteers will also have placards saying ‘Thank You, for not eating us’. We feel college, youth hangouts, parks and cafés are perfect places to set up a vegetarian hugging station.