Andrew Johnston asked to cut his Beef

Andrew "Beef" Johnston has been sent a letter by the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals in the UK (PETA UK) asking him to consider changing his nickname to "Tofu".

Johnston, 27, rose to fame when claiming his maiden European Tour title at the Open de Espana in April and has since gained sudden celebrity in the golf world for a larger-than-life personality that typically involves eating a lot of steaks and burgers. 

PETA UK said in a release Tuesday that it has sent a package of tofu steaks and soy sausages to Beef in the "hopes the delicious meat-free fare will inspire him to adopt a kinder, healthier vegan lifestyle and a new nickname: Andrew 'Tofu' Johnston."

In the release, the company notes a "growing number of top athletes - including boxer David Haye, tennis champ Novak Djokovic, and ultra-endurance athlete Rich Roll - have stopped eating animal-derived foods."

Check out the letter below...

 

Dear Andrew,

Congratulations on all your success this year! Like many others, we’ve been enthusiastically following your career, and we thought we’d send you a gift of delicious vegan steaks and burgers in the hope that you’ll consider adopting a kinder, healthier vegan lifestyle, which would pave the way for a new nickname: Andrew “Tofu” Johnston.

Along with tofu, veggie burgers and soya steaks are readily available, high in protein, and low in artery-clogging saturated fats and cholesterol. By ditching beef and other animal-derived foods, you could reduce your risk of developing heart disease by a long shot (actually, by a whopping 32 per cent, according to a study from the University of Oxford). And if that’s not enough, consider that vegetarians and vegans live, on average, six to 10 years longer than meat-eaters do. Just think how many more championships you could win during that time. Replacing beef burgers with bean burgers would also save many animals a year from the routine cruelty of the meat industry – including painful mutilations such as branding and castration without anaesthetics.

Your new nickname would also raise awareness of the urgent need to move towards a cruelty-free lifestyle to offset the worst effects of climate change. According to the United Nations, animal agriculture is “one of the top two or three most significant contributors to the most serious environmental problems, at every scale from local to global”.

I hope you’ll agree that going vegan is a hole in one for your health, animals, and the environment.

Sincerely,

Kate Smith

PETA UK Celebrity Liaison