The public outrage over the Kohima Bench of Gauhati High Court’s decision to allow the sale and consumption of dog meat in Nagaland has led the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), India to erect billboards in various cities calling out meat-eaters’ speciesism (a bias in favour of some species over others).

The billboards, initially set up in Guwahati, Delhi and Mumbai, show a dog and a chicken with the question, “If you wouldn’t eat a dog, why eat a chicken?”,

The campaign encouraging people to go vegan, has been initiated on the eve of World Meat Free Day, observed on 15 June every year, according to a PETA release issued on Wednesday.

It stated that both dogs and chickens want to live.

“Dogs don’t deserve to be rounded up and tricked to their deaths so that humans can eat them but neither do chickens, goats, pigs, or any other animals,” PETA India Manager of Vegan Projects Dr Kiran Ahuja said.

All animals that are used as food suffer because of the way they are killed, Ahuja said.

Eating meat and other animal-derived foods has been linked to heart disease, strokes, diabetes, cancer, and obesity, while rearing and killing animals for food has been linked to a multitude of zoonotic diseases including SARS, bird flu, swine flu, Ebola, HIV, and likely COVID-19, the PETA said.