Pro-Vegan activists show films of animal slaughter on Cardiff’s Queen Street

A local Cardiff group called ‘The Earthlings Experience’ set up a demonstration on Queen Street to promote veganism on National Earthlings Day

The demonstration is based on the 2005 documentary Earthlings, which uses undercover cameras to document humanity’s use of animals for clothing, food, and scientific research. Following a similar style to demonstrations on London’s tube system earlier this year, the group brought it to Cardiff to promote an environmentally and ethically friendly lifestyle.

One of the activists showing the documentary Earthlings

The demonstration centred around two blindfolded girls at a table with plates of plastic meats in front of them. This represented the unawareness humanity has to their food. The table was surrounded by masked group members who spoke to members of the public, whilst holding laptops and tablets screening graphic animal slaughter.

The group explained the negative impacts of dairy and meat products on human health. They then continued to discuss documentaries on the meat industry and its environmental implications. One of the activists promoted the work of Gary Yourofsky, who has held 2660 lectures at 186 schools on veganism and the slaughter of animals, and aspired to reach a similar audience.

Members of the group handed out leaflets with facts and statistics of global animal deaths, including information on how 145 million animals are killed every day, excluding fish. Globally 80 cities took part in demonstrations for National Earthlings Day.

The centre of the demonstration

A 19 year old activist said: “I just spend my time promoting veganism and helping a good cause. I was the last one out of my family to turn vegan. It’s seen as manly to eat meat. It’s mostly men I speak to that declare their love for meat. And there are some people that you are never going to turn, but we can do our best to try.

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“We went to a protest in Manchester recently. Manchester Uni do a lot of animal protesting, so we went up there, it was a huge protest, and basically told them what was what.”

Madeline is 13 years old and experiences issues at school due to her lifestyle choices. She told us: “We’re not here to shout, we’re here to plant seeds. Our purpose is to save the planet, is to save humanity, because we’re here, we need to do it because we’re destroying the plant.”

Handmade posters hung on the table’s edge

Jamie Baker, the group’s spokesperson tells us: “We want the video to be the main focus. We don’t want the leaflet to go into someone’s hand and for them to not see what they’re contributing financially to.

“We’re not in people’s face, it’s not a protest, it’s an awareness campaign. People come up to us.

“Our primary focus is to make as many people in the world go vegan, otherwise there’ll be no fish in 2048. We’ve hugely helped the cause. We’ve had three people come back today and thanked us saying they had become vegan due to what we do. We need to hit the student population more.”