'Eating animals has brought us to our knees': Brian May asks people to give up meat amidst coronavirus pandemic
Brian May has called for humanity to give up meat and take up veganism after the world was "brought to its knees" by the coronavirus pandemic that many believe originated from bats.
May, the lead guitarist of legendary rock band Queen, has been following a plant-based diet since the start of 2020 after accepting a challenge and said that COVID-19 should force people to reconsider their relationship with meat.
"If you want to get deep into it, I think we should be looking again at whether we should be eating animals," told NME in an interview. "That’s a central issue here, this pandemic seemed to come from people eating animals and it’s becoming more well known that eating animals is not the greatest thing for our health."
He also shared that he had taken the Vegan Challenge in January and had managed to stay away from meat himself for the last three months.
"To me, it was an experiment, because for a long time I’d been an animal campaigner but grappled with the fact that I was still eating them occasionally," he said.
"But to go vegan was just a decision, and I haven’t been preachy about it, but now we’ve seen more of the effects of how eating animals has brought us to our knees as a species, I think it’s time to re-examine our world in a way that doesn’t abuse other species."
He said he doesn't know if this will happen, despite COVID-19 claiming over 127,000 lives worldwide, but that he would start being more "preachy" about veganism because "it is the way forward, in so many ways."
May's comments came just after former Beatle Sir Paul McCartney called for the banning of China's wet markets -- which is believed to be the ground zero for the pandemic -- and branded the practice of eating bats as "medieval."
"I really hope that this will mean that the Chinese government will say, ‘Okay, guys, we have really got to get super hygienic around here," he said during an appearance on radio host Howard Stern's SiriusXM program on Tuesday, April 14.
"Let’s face it, come on, it is a little bit medieval, eating bats," he continued, before adding, "They might as well be, you know, letting off atomic bombs because this is affecting the whole world. Whoever is responsible for this is at war with the world and itself — it just doesn't make any sense at all."
Many experts are currently of the belief that the novel coronavirus that is wreaking havoc across the planet originated in bats and passed on to a mystery animal species that then passed it on to humans.
They also warned that it was likely that future coronavirus outbreaks — such as the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) and the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) — will originate from bats.
McCartney's wish may yet come true. After China recently reopened Wuhan following a 76-day lockdown, it was reported that the city's wet shops had been struggling to attract customers. "There is no business and no one is coming. Everywhere is blocked and people cannot come in. Everyone is scared to go out and contract the virus," one shop worker shared.