PETA calls on Leicester's Pork Pie Roundabout to be renamed Vegan Pie Roundabout

Animal rights group PETA has urged Leicester’s Pork Pie Roundabout to be renamed "Vegan Pie Roundabout" in a bid to encourage people to go vegan.

In a letter to the city's mayor Sir Peter Soulsby, PETA's senior campaigns manager, Kate Werner wrote that "this is not a pie-in-sky request" and the name change would "inspire healthier food choices that help the environment, celebrate Leicester’s heritage, and prevent animal suffering."

"Eating a varied plant-based diet has been shown to prevent heart disease, diabetes, abdominal fat, and cancer," Werner added.

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"Vibrant vegan foods also have less saturated fat, fewer calories, and less cholesterol than their meaty counterparts.

"Encouraging people to eat plant-based could also help lessen the burden on Leicester's already overstretched NHS."

The city's historic connection to veganism was also mentioned where the term was coined in Leicester by Donald Watson in 1944, as PETA said changing the name "would also be a great way to celebrate the city's vegan and pie-loving heritage."

The Pork Pie Roundabout got its name from the Pork Pie Library located nearby which is said to resemble a pork pie when viewed from above.

"Eating vegan helps spare sensitive, intelligent animals a lifetime of suffering," PETA explained.

"You can help stop this cruelty with a name change that will inspire residents to choose vegan foods.

"There's never been a better time to stop going around in circles and take a bite out of Leicester's dangerous obesity crisis."

The request has sparked quite a stir online as people are not impressed at the idea of Pork Pie Roundabout being given a new vegan-friendly name.

One person said: "Leave Pork Pie Roundabout alone."

"It’s been the pork pie roundabout since I was a kid. Go get offended somewhere else!" another person said.

Someone else added: "It’ll always be Pork Pie Island… forever and ever."

GB News presenter Eamonn Holmes also criticised PETA's call and said during his hosting duties that vegans are "find something to complain about."

Mayor Soulsby has also made his stance on the matter clear and believes the request is "just pie in the sky."

"It’s a funny and quite clever way of drawing attention to themselves and their cause – but there is no way we could change the name people have given to the library and the roundabout next to it," he told Metro.co.uk.

"It has been known locally as the Pork Pie Library since it was built in the 1930s, thanks to its distinctive circular shape. Any talk of changing its name is just pie in the sky."

So it looks like Pork Pie roundabout is here to stay.

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