Holding out cookies to students passing by, one man outside the Allen Street Gates yesterday asked an unusual question: "Would you like a cookie to stop global warming?"

Eric Bunge (junior-kinesiology), a volunteer for the State College community group Humanity for Animals, was helping to promote the "Great American Meatout." The Meatout is an annual diet education campaign sponsored by the Farm Animal Reform Movement, a nonprofit organization that advocates plant-based diets.

Yesterday, he and other volunteers for the organization passed out pro-vegan literature, recipes and samples of "guilt-free" food products while encouraging passers-by to sign a pledge to not eat meat for one day.

Terri Nelson-Bunge, founder of Humanity for Animals, said the group's main message this year is that students would adopt a vegan diet if they really cared about the environment.

"The mass production of animals for food creates massive pollution and contributes to global warming," she said.

One major byproduct of meat production is methane gas, which, according to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), traps heat in the atmosphere more than 20 times more effectively than carbon dioxide. The EPA also reports that chicken, hog and cattle excrement has polluted 35,000 miles of rivers in 22 states and contaminated groundwater in 17 states.

Alison Boyle (freshman-biotechnology) said she has been a vegetarian since she was six, but signed the pledge to show her support for the Meatout. She added she currently eats eggs and dairy products, but is considering switching to a vegan diet.

"I think it's important to be a vegetarian because you're not only helping the animals, you're also helping the environment," Boyle said.

Laura Borysowski (senior-civil engineering) saw the information on her way to class yesterday and decided to sign the pledge.

"I actually gave up eating meat for Lent," Borysowski said. "I give up something for Lent every year, and [going vegetarian] is something I always wanted to do."

Nelson-Bunge also cited other, more familiar reasons not to patronize the meat industry.

"We're also here because we care about the animals and the cruelty that's involved," Nelson-Bunge said.

Much of the literature distributed yesterday depicted oppressive conditions for animals raised on factory farms. Published by OpposeCruelty.org, images of malnourished, sickly, confined and even dead pigs, chickens and cows illustrated the pamphlets.

Humanity for Animals displayed one poster from vegkit.org that showed a kitten and a piglet next to each other and asked, "Which do you pet? Which do you eat? Why?"

"We love our cat, so of course we would never eat it," said Nelson-Bunge. "But we don't get attached to the cow, because they are away from us."