PUNE: People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) India activists on Wednesday held a demonstration outside the Ruby Hall clinic urging people to turn to vegetarian or ‘Vegan’ to curb the spread of Influenza H1N1.

Dressed in nursing uniforms and a protester wearing a pig costume, volunteers held placards with the message ‘Prescription for swine flu: Go Vegan’ urging passers-by to be vegetarian to prevent viral diseases such as swine flu.

With concern growing in the city over swine flu virus, PETA India wants everyone to know that there’s one simple way to prevent such outbreaks before they occur: adopt a vegan diet.

A PETA communique said, animals on factory farms are crammed by the thousands into filthy, extremely crowded sheds, and they are slaughtered on killing floors that are contaminated with faeces, vomit and other bodily fluids.

These conditions have led to a rise in food borne pathogens such as E. coli, campylobacter, salmonella, listeria and other bacteria that originate in animals’ intestinal tracts and faeces.

As their names imply, swine flu and avian flu come from pigs and birds, and the viruses that cause them often mutate into pathogens that can afflict humans.

Because of the filthy and stressful conditions on factory farms around the world, pigs and other animals are fed a steady diet of antibiotics. However, these antibiotics are only temporarily effective against bacteria, and they are completely useless against viruses such as the swine flu virus.

And the problem is not restricted to pigs: factory-farmed cows and chickens, who also live in crowded and unsanitary conditions, can contract and spread influenza viruses and other similar viruses. Hans-Gerhard Wagner, a senior officer with the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation, has called the “intensive industrial farming of livestock” an “opportunity for emerging disease.”

“Meat is directly linked to heart disease, diabetes and certain types of cancer, and disease-breeding factory farms could be the death of us all. The best way to protect our health - individually and globally - is to go vegan,” said PETA India senior campaigns coordinator Nikunj Sharma.

ROOT CAUSE

While simple, common-sense measures such as hand-washing and covering sneezes are important, going vegan or vegetarian gets to the root of the matter by reducing the demand for meat production, said a PETA communique.