It is a topless picture that will generate strong emotions. Animal rights campaign group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (Peta) has put up a city centre billboard that links meat-eating with man boobs.
The display, outside a hospital in Glasgow, shows a protuberant, hairy chest accompanied by the caption: "Dude Looks like a Lady? Lose the breasts. Go vegetarian."
The campaign claims "meat-eating is forcing many men to get in touch with their feminine side" and bases the claim on a statement attributed to a Scottish surgeon that obesity problems are fuelling the demand for breast-reduction surgery in men.
Glasgow was chosen, Peta maintains: "Because since 2007 Scotland has seen an astounding 80% rise in the number of surgeries performed to address gynecomastia – excessive breast development in men."
The campaign group added: "The advertisment was designed to warn meat-eaters that obesity – which can be caused by a steady diet of animal-derived foods – is linked to the increase in gynecomastia." The billboard is outside Glasgow's southern general hospital.
Meat-eaters, Peta contends, are nine times as likely to be obese as vegans. "According to Ken Stewart, a surgeon at Spire Murrayfield hospital in Edinburgh, Scotland's obesity problem is fuelling the demand for breast-reduction surgery in men," said the group.
Scotland has one of the highest obesity rates among OECD countries, second only to the US. Eating meat, milk, cheese and other foods that come from animals has been linked to heart disease, strokes, diabetes and cancer, according to the vegetarian lobby group that has used shocking, bloodied images to campaign against fur coats in the fashion industry.
"Unwanted breast development in men illustrates that there's nothing manly about meat and milk," says Peta's director of special projects, Poorva Joshipura. "Cruelty to animals, environmental degradation and a host of meat and dairy-related diseases are reasons enough to go vegetarian, but male breast growth is a good reason too."
The picture, not digitally enhanced, is of a real man's chest.
