Royal Welsh Show attendees confronted by ‘bloody’ PETA banner over Wye Bridge

Molly Stubbs

A group of PETA supporters have unfurled a banner reading ‘Farmers Love Animals to Death’ over the Wye Bridge on the opening day of the Royal Welsh Show (21 – 24 July 2025).

PETA chose the Royal Welsh, the largest agricultural show in the UK, for their demonstration to share their view that all animals raised for food endure immense suffering and a violent death at the slaughterhouse when most are still just babies.

The action comes two years after PETA encouraged the Royal Welsh Show organisers to reimagine the event as a celebration of Wales’ hard-working plant farmers by removing the “livestock” parade and going vegan.

Animals

Every year, thousands of animals are put into lorries and taken to Builth Wells for parades in the ring at the agricultural show. PETA say many of their lives will end at the abattoir soon after.

PETA Vice President of Vegan Corporate Projects Dawn Carr said: “Farmers claiming to ‘love’ animals while forcibly breeding, confining, and killing them for their body parts and excretions deserve a cognitive dissonance award.

“There’s nothing loving about parading animals against their will in front of noisy crowds with mouths full of flesh, either. PETA is urging everyone to leave the violence of animal farming behind and embrace a kinder, more sustainable approach to agriculture. The future of farming is plants.”

PETA, whose motto reads in part that ‘animals are not ours to eat’, opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview.

Speciesism 

Kate Werner, Senior Campaigns Manager at PETA UK, told Nation.Cymru: “We’ve been raised in a society that is inherently speciesist, so we’re taught some animals are for eating, some animals are for loving like dogs and cats, some animals are for fun, some animals are for experimenting on.

“What PETA are doing is highlighting the inherent speciesism that we’re raised with, and helping people to realise that’s wrong and you can change whenever you want. Animals aren’t here for our entertainment.

“The animals on parade at the Royal Welsh Show and millions more like them on farms across the UK suffer for their entire lives, before being sent to the abattoir where they have their throats cut. Our banner says ‘Farmers Love Animals to Death,’ and farmers claim to love animals but loving animals means not exploiting them or killing them or eating them.

“Most animals on farms in the UK never see the light of day or breathe fresh air, their tails or beaks or other body parts are cut off without anaesthetic. None of them go to their deaths willingly, so we’re just highlighting that this is completely unnecessary and cruel, and every individual can spare animals from this suffering by changing their diet, by going vegan.

“They can order a free starter kit from our website where they’ll find tons of information not just about vegan eating but about how you can wear vegan and live a vegan life. Anything you like to eat made out of animals you can find made entirely cruelty free and vegan. Most people are scared of change but it’s really never been easier. Now is the time.”

For more information, visit PETA.org.uk or follow PETA on Facebook, X, TikTok, or Instagram.