Deadly Pig Truck Crash in Clayton Prompts PETA Highway Memorial Urging Empathy
For Immediate Release:
June 14, 2024
Contact:
Sara Groves 202-483-7382
Following the deaths of dozens of pigs on a truck that overturned on an I-70 ramp this week, PETA plans to place a billboard in their honor near the crash site pointing out that the victims were thinking, feeling individuals who suffered immensely only because people wanted to eat them.
“Pigs died in agony and terror in this crash, and the survivors were hauled off, presumably for workers to slit their throats and carve up their bodies for meat,” says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. “PETA urges everyone to please go vegan to help keep pigs out of trucks and slaughterhouses in the first place.”
PETA’s action coincides with the group’s Midwestern tour of “Hell on Wheels”—PETA’s life-size, hyperrealistic pig transport truck covered with images of real pigs crammed into crates on their way to slaughter. The tour includes stops in Toledo and Cleveland next week where local diners will be bombarded with actual recorded sounds of the animals’ panicked screams along with a subliminal message every 10 seconds suggesting that people go vegan.
PETA points out that pigs are playful, intelligent, friendly animals who are soothed by music, love playing ball, sleep in “pig piles,” and even enjoy getting massages. In the meat industry, workers chop off piglets’ tails, clip their teeth with pliers, and castrate the males. Each person who goes vegan spares nearly 200 animals every year; reduces their own risk of suffering from cancer, heart disease, strokes, diabetes, and obesity; and dramatically shrinks their carbon footprint. PETA’s free vegan starter kit can help those looking to make the switch.
PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to eat”—points out that Every Animal Is Someone and offers free Empathy Kits for people who need a lesson in kindness. For more information, please visit PETA.org or follow the group on X, Facebook, or Instagram.
