Merissa Underwood (vegan): A Fearless Beauty for Animal-People and the Environment, Part 1 of 2

Today, we have the pleasure to present an extraordinary person, whose beauty and bravery add to the crown she wears!

“My name is Merissa Underwood. I am Miss Montana USA 2020. I competed at Miss USA, last fall. I've been a vegan for eight years now, and an environmental activist as well.”

“When I won Miss Montana USA, I came out as a vegan. I told everybody I'm vegan, and I shared some educational infographs on Instagram from ‘Cowspiracy’ and a couple other environmental, animal agriculture related documentaries. And I was just inundated with attacks, aggression.

It's Montana, you know, one of our biggest exports are cattle. So, when the state titleholder comes out, and says not only is eating animals wrong, but you shouldn't eat animals, and also eating animals is ruining the planet, it was just the worst thing that anybody could have ever done. But also the best thing that happened to me, because with all the hate came all the goodness. And so it was on the news in Montana, and I would go out and people knew who I was. And they would ask me questions, and they were interested. People have told me that they became vegan because of what I talked about on social media alone.”

For many decades, our Beloved Supreme Master Ching Hai has spoken of the direct link between being vegan and saving the environment. “I would really like to plead with all the people to please awaken to our dire situation of the planet, and just do what we can in our individual capacity. And the easiest and fastest thing we can do is just to become vegan, so that we don’t have to raise more animal-people – to feed them and to take care of them because they emit a lot of methane into the air, and that warms our planet. And 55-plus billion murdered every year. It’s not the way we should keep going, especially if we want to save our planet. All the evidence points to that direction: that if we stop animal-people raising our planet will cool down. Very easy, just be vegan – every one of us, yes, one simple solution.”