Welcome
to Team Vegan Philly! We are a group of vegan and vegetarian athletes
from the greater Philadelphia region currently training to run for the second
year in a row in the Philadelphia Marathon (with marathon, half-marathon,
and 8k races).
We’re lacing up our running shoes and hitting the pavement to
raise money for the great veg outreach effortsbeing done
by the Humane League of Philadelphia!. We’re also here to
raise awareness that not only is a vegan diet great for the animals’
lives, it’s great for our lives too - making us leaner, healthier,
and more energetic!
We hope that you will join us, either through running with us in one of
the upcoming races (8k, half-marathon, or marathon), or by sponsoring one
of our dedicated runners! If you have any questions, don’t hesitate
to contact us!
Why We Run
Each year,
over 11 billion farmed animals are raised and killed for food in the
United States. Sadly, these animals have almost no legal protection
whatsoever from the horrific treatment they face on modern day factory
farms. As a result they are treated not like the living, feeling, sentient
creatures they are, but rather like objects, units of production.
Hens in egg farms are confined in cages so small they can barely turn
around, cannot spread their wings, and live their whole life in feces-filled
conditions in dark sheds. Female pigs are kept impregnanted year round
and often spend their entire lives in small narrow metal stalls where
they cannot even turn around. Male calves, a by-product of the dairy
industry, are often kept in small wooden crates or chained to metal
stalls on veal farms before being slaughtered at a young age. 95% of
the animals killed for food production have no legal protection during
the slaughter process, and as such animals are routinely boiled alive,
tossed alive into wood chippers or open fires, or have their throats
slit while fully conscious. These are just some of the cruelties faced
by billions of farmed animals every single day.
Because these animals - pigs, cows, chickens, rabbits, geese, sheep,
goats and more - have a desire to live and be free just as we do, and
because they have just as much intelligence, sentience, and uniqueness
as the cats and dogs we call faithful companions, we believe in doing
everything in our power to share the horrors of animal agriculture with
the community and encourage a vegan lifestyle (a vegan lifestyle is
one that avoids foods or products from animal sources, opting instead
for a healthy plant-based diet and trendy cruelty-free fashion).
Team Vegan Philly is running in the upcoming
Philadelphia Marathon in order to raise money to continue educating
the public about these issues through advertisement campaigns,
humane education classes, leafletting, tabling, online advocacy, and
other methods.
We
are in need of both new runners and financial sponsors for our current
runners! We hope
you will join us as part of one of the most compelling and monumental
social justice movements of our time, and help us create a more compassionate
future for animals!
