‘Hell on Wheels’ Is Coming: Squawking Truck to Ruffle Feathers at West Chicago Food Festival
For Immediate Release:
August 25, 2022
Contact:
Robin Goist 202-483-7382
Diners at the West Chicago Food Festival just might think twice about chowing down on fried chicken after they see—and hear—“Hell on Wheels,” PETA’s new guerilla marketing campaign featuring a life-size chicken transport truck covered with images of real chickens crammed into crates on their way to a slaughterhouse, complete with recorded sounds of the birds’ actual cries and a subliminal message every 10 seconds suggesting that people go vegan. The truck will stake out the festival on Saturday—which is World Day to End Speciesism—as part of the group’s national tour.
“Behind every fried chicken sandwich or barbecued wing is a once-living, sensitive individual who was crammed onto a truck for a terrifying, miserable journey to their death,” says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. “PETA’s ‘Hell on Wheels’ truck is an appeal to anyone who eats chicken to remember that the meat industry is cruel to birds and that the kindest meal is a vegan one.”
Birds killed for their flesh are bred to grow such unnaturally large upper bodies that their legs often become crippled under the weight, and the sheds in which they’re confined are so filthy that the red, watery goo in packages of chicken is referred to as “fecal soup.” They’re trucked through all weather extremes, sometimes over hundreds of miles and without any food or water, to slaughterhouses, where their throats are slit—often while they’re still conscious.
The “Hell on Wheels” tour includes stops outside several other food festivals and state fairs: the Michigan Chicken Wing Festival in Lansing, the Taste of Buffalo in New York, the Nashville Hot Chicken Music Festival in Tennessee, and the Illinois State Fair in Springfield. The truck is also driving by chicken restaurants in Baltimore, Memphis, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, and other cities.
PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to eat”—opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETA.org or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.
