Mumbai : Lying on a lush bed of spicy red chillies and showing off her striking vegetarian diet–powered physique,Sunny Leone appears in a new People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) India ad – just before World Environment Day (5 June) – that proclaims, "Spice Up Your Life! Go Vegetarian." The stunning campaign was styled by Hitendra Kapopara and shot by leading photographer Subi Samuel, and Leone's hair and make-up were done by Tomas Moucka.
"I've also noticed I have a lot more energy, I'm eating a lot more vegetables, I feel actually really, really amazing," says Leone on going vegetarian. "Animals suffering in the meat industry is probably one of the saddest things that I have ever seen." Leone was named PETA's Person of the Year in 2016 and previously starred in PETA's dog-sterilisation campaign. She made her Bollywood debut in the 2012 erotic thriller Jism 2 and recently appeared in One Night Stand, Mastizaade, and Beiimaan Love.
PETA – whose motto reads, in part, that "animals are not ours to eat" – reveals in its video "Glass Walls" that in today's industrialised meat and dairy industries, chickens' throats are cut while they're still conscious, fish suffocate or are cut open while they're still alive, pigs are often stabbed in the heart as they scream in pain, and calves are torn away from their mothers within hours of birth. At slaughterhouses, animals are often killed in full view of one another and dismembered while they're still conscious.
Eating animals also wreaks havoc on human health. The consumption of meat, eggs, and dairy foods has been conclusively linked to a higher risk of suffering from heart disease, strokes, diabetes, obesity, and cancer, and raising animals for food is a leading producer of the greenhouse-gas emissions that cause climate change.
