A longtime PETA member and outspoken vegetarian, Sir Paul McCartney has never been shy about promoting animal rights issues. He’s taken KFC to task over its refusal to improve conditions for the roughly 1 billion chickens killed every year for its restuarants. He’s also a staunch opponent of animal tests, speaking out against Covance and other companies that test on animals and specifying that money raised for breast cancer research in Linda McCartney’s name not be used to fund animal experiments.

So it shouldn’t come as any surprise that Sir Paul wore his animal rights activism in his sleeve–or more accurately, on his chest– in the video for his song “Nod Your Head”, from his latest album Memory Almost Full. In the video, Sir Paul dances playfully with supermodels while wearing PETA’s newest pro-vegetarian T-shirt, designed by Robert Rehm and pictured on the cover of this issue. Popular on YouTube, the video has spread the animal rights message to millions of people.

“I think the biggest change anyone could make in their own lifestyle would be to become vegetarian,” says Sir Paul, who recently wrote a letter to the editor of the UK’s The Sunday Times about the environmental benefits of vegetarian diets that was read by up to 1.5 million people. “The global meat industry and the land and water required to service it is one of the major contributors to global warming. So I would urge everyone to think about taking this simple step to help our precious environment and save it for the children of the future.”

Although he wears a cow on his shirt and went vegetarian many years ago after watching lambs gambol in the field outside his window, Sir Paul is also concerned about the plight of fish–who are often the last animals people cross of ftheir grocery list–and the plight of the world’s oceans.
“Unfortunately, many people seem to think that vegetarians eat fish, but this is not so, and when you consider the overfishing, the marine pollution, and the huge damage done to our precious oceans that are caused by commercial fishing, it becomes obvious that a vegetarian lifestyle would greatly improve our environment and help to save our oceans,” he says.

If you haven’t adopted a vegetarian diet yet, maybe Sir Paul’s enthusiasm will inspire you to check out PETA’s website VegCooking.com, where you’ll find nutrition information, tantalizing recepies, cooking and shopping tips, and everything else you need to make the switch.

“Nowadays it is so easy to become vegetarian,” says Sir Paul. “That is a simple but extremely effective step that many people could take to help the environment and improve their own health at the same time.”