With Easter around the corner, animal rights organization PETA has requested that First Lady Jill Biden make one unusual change to an event held at the White House.
Every Easter Monday the Easter Egg Roll is held on the South Lawn for children and their parents. On the day, children roll hard-boiled eggs down Capital Hill and this year the tradition—which has existed for more than 100 years—will be held on Monday, April 1.
However, PETA has asked that Biden replace the eggs with dyed potatoes, saying it would "please everyone who doesn't eat these cholesterol bombs for health, cultural, religious, or environmental reasons."
Newsweek emailed a Biden spokesperson for comment on Wednesday.
The organization sent a letter to the First Lady, explaining that they didn't want her to support factory farms.
"Children love animals and would be sad to learn that the eggs used for fun and games at the White House come from tormented hens whose lives are spent in cages that afford them less space than a standard sheet of typing paper," PETA President Ingrid Newkirk said in a statement. "Easter should be a time of renewal and joy for all sentient beings—and that means hens, too."
"Instead of promoting the deleterious factory farming and slaughter industries, will you please initiate the annual White House Potato Roll?" part of the letter reads.
"Easter is not a time of renewal or joy for chickens on egg factory farms," it says. "It can take up to 36 hours in typically hellish conditions for a hen—who spends her entire life in a cage smaller than a letter-sized sheet of paper—to produce just one of the thousands of eggs slated to be used at the White House Easter Egg Roll.
"In starch contrast, a potato roll wouldn't exploit any sentient beings and would encourage empathy and kindness to animals while supporting potato farmers in the U.S. Potatoes are the most popular vegetable in the country and can be safely dyed, allowing for spudtacular traditional activities, such as rolling them, seeking for them, and decorating them."
She suggested that on Easter Monday, Biden could hold potato sack races and games of hot potato in keeping with the theme.
Newkirk concluded: "Amid the worst avian flu outbreak in history, in which almost 82 million birds—most of them egg-laying chickens—have been slaughtered, and during a period of rising egg prices, we're rooting for you to leave a legacy of kindness by starting this new Easter tradition."
PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that "animals are not ours to eat or abuse in any other way"—offers free Empathy Kits for people to learn more about kindness.
The First Lady's name has been in the news of late as transcripts of President Joe Biden's two-day interview with Justice Department investigator Robert Hur were released by members of Congress on Tuesday. This was ahead of Hur's congressional testimony about Joe Biden's handling of presidential documents.
The president told Hur that his wife did not want him to run for the Senate again and knew that he had a passion for architecture and design. Joe Biden told Hur that she offered to pay for architecture school if he would quit politics.
"In order to try to convince me not to run for the Senate for the 19th time, my wife said: 'Look, you don't run—I'll pay for architectural school for you.'"
When people in the White House laughed at his comment, the president replied: "I'm deadly serious, not a joke."
Uncommon Knowledge
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
About the writer
Billie is a Newsweek Pop Culture and Entertainment Reporter based in London, U.K. She reports on film and TV, trending ... Read more
