‘break free from prejudice’

As the new year begins, Wu-Tang Clan’s RZA is reminding people to treat all animals with respect and compassion.

In a new video for PETA US, the hip-hop icon and long-time vegan morphs into images of different men, women, and animals, saying, ‘We are all the same, in all the ways that matter.’

We’re not different

‘It doesn’t matter if we have fur or feathers or fins’, RZA says. ‘We’re not different in any important way. We all have thoughts and feelings. We all feel love and pain and loneliness and joy.’

PETA points out that chickens, mice, elephants and sheep feel pain and fear just as intensely as humans do. Yet chickens’ throats are slit while they’re still conscious in the meat industry, mice are poisoned in laboratory experiments, elephants sway back and forth in psychological distress in circus trailers and sheep are punched, cut and killed for their wool – simply because they look different from human beings.

‘Our task must be to break free from prejudice’, RZA concludes in the video, ‘and to see ourselves in everyone else.’

PETA – whose motto reads, ‘Animals are not ours to eat, wear, experiment on, use for entertainment, or abuse in any other way’ – encourages everyone to choose vegan meals, shop for animal-free clothing, buy personal care products that weren’t tested on animals and stay away from circuses and theme parks that use animals.