Roadside Memorial Urged After Highway Crash Kills Countless Chickens

PETA Tribute Would Encourage Drivers to Travel Safely and Think About the Fates of All Road Users

For Immediate Release:
August 11, 2016

Contact:
Megan Wiltsie 202-483-7382

In the wake of Friday’s incident in which an unknown number of chickens in cages were scattered and killed when a truck transporting the birds rolled over on Highway 99 near Lander Avenue in Turlock, PETA rushed a letter today on behalf of a local Turlock resident to the Stanislaus County Department of Public Works asking for approval to erect a 5-foot-tall tombstone memorial at the scene. The tribute (image here) would feature an image of a chicken next the words “In Memory of the Chickens Who Suffered and Died at This Spot, August 2016. Try Vegan”

“This devastating crash left countless birds mangled and suffering,” says PETA President Ingrid Newkirk. “PETA’s roadside memorial will remind everyone to prevent further tragedies by driving safely, while also pointing to the pain that smart, sensitive chickens endure for nothing more than a fleeting meal.”

Turlock is also home to an industrialized farm that abandoned a shed full of 50,000 hens—45,000 of whom died of neglect—in 2012, as captured in the documentary Turlock. PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to eat”—notes that before chickens are loaded onto trucks bound for slaughterhouses, the clever, curious birds are fed a steady diet of antibiotics and bred to grow so large that their legs often break under their own weight. At the slaughterhouse, they’re shackled upside down and their throats are slit, while others are scalded to death in defeathering tanks.

For more information, please visit PETA.org.