Dear Producer,

Over the past year, discussions about vegan diets have gained popularity with support ranging from daytime talk show hosts Ellen DeGeneres and Oprah Winfrey to the success of several vegan books like Jonathan Saffran Foer's Eating Animals and Kathy Freston's The Veganist.

For 27 years, the Great American Meatout, coordinated annually by Farm Animal Rights Movement (FARM), has been encouraging people to give meat-free diets a try in order to benefit their own health, our environment, and the animals. For Meatout 2011, FARM has challenged local activists to not just win over their communities' hearts, but also their taste buds. Free vegan food will be distributed to the public in a thousand communities throughout all 50 US states and 30 other countries.

We've set the bar high to serve 20,000 people in the month of March, and we're well on our way to meeting this goal - our grassroots network of activists has already pledged to feed vegan food to 13,000 people!

This decades-long campaign has paid off with results - for example, FARM's annual analysis of USDA statistics demonstrates that the per-capita number of animals raised and killed in the US continues to drop. The new US Dietary Guidelines, food service giant Sodexo, and a number of school districts have also joined the national groundswell to reduce America's love affair with meat.

Over all these years, we've seen the availability and quality of vegan products improve drastically. Average supermarket aisles are now packed with dairy-free cheeses that taste and stretch like the real stuff and vegan substitutes for meaty American favorites.

We'd like to help start a discussion about vegan activism on your program. We can connect you with knowledgeable, entertaining, and thought-provoking guests, including the youth leaders who drive these campaigns. We're happy to discuss the bounty of delicious vegan food that will be served during Meatout 2011, but can also take more serious questions such as:

• Why does our society treat pigs so differently than dogs?
• How does meat and dairy production contribute to global warming?
• How can a vegan diet reduce our risk of cancer and other chronic diseases?
• What role should we, as individuals, have in alleviating these problems?

The animal agriculture industry is scrambling to organize itself and defend against the arguments in favor of veganism, but the movement continues to grow. To join the discussion, send me a quick e-mail or phone call - we can help get you a great show! For more information, visit www.meatout.org.

Sincerely,

Michael A. Weber
Meatout Director


The Great American Meatout is coordinated each year by Farm Animal Rights Movement, a national nonprofit organization working to end the use of animals for food. Events are conducted by caring individuals and consumer advocacy and animal protection groups.