A member of the animal rights group Direct Action Everywhere stormed into a San Francisco restaurant and launched into a tearful rant against eating meat. A video of the incident quickly went viral on YouTube, garnering 578,000 views as of Tuesday morning.
Activist Kelly Atlas entered Bluestem Brasserie in San Francisco and immediately called for diners’ attention.
“I have a little girl,” Atlas can be heard saying in the video. “She was very abused for her entire life. She was terrified. She has a very determined look in her eyes wherever she goes. She was hurt and abused her entire life because of this establishment, and because of establishments like it.”
Atlas was referring to a chicken named Snow that she rescued from an egg farm after her egg production fell off.
“I can see you smiling, and I can see you laughing, but to her this is not funny,” she continued. “I went in there with other humans, and I took her out of there, and if I hadn’t she wouldn’t be with me right now. All of those other girls, everyone we left behind, they just wanted to live too…and right now, their eggs, and their milk, and their bodies are on plates inside this restaurant right now.”
According to its website, Direct Action Everywhere’s mission is to “create a world where animal liberation is a reality.” The group, based in the Bay Area, told CBS San Franciso’s KPIX 5 that this incident was not the first protest against restaurants that serve meat, and will not be the last.
“We’re so enraged when we hear someone hurting a dog or a cat, but because of this ‘speciesism’ in our minds, we don’t think twice about a chicken being hurt, or a pig or a cow,” Atlas told KPIX 5.
According to the report, Direct Action Everywhere is “always looking for new restaurants to spread their message.”