RUN, PIGS, RUN! PETA Statement re Slaughterhouse Truck Crash

For Immediate Release:
June 29, 2017

Contact:
David Perle 202-483-7382

Below, please find a statement from PETA President Ingrid Newkirk in response to this morning’s tractor-trailer crash in Wilmer, outside Dallas, which sent escaped pigs fleeing down the interstate:

For proof that pigs are intelligent animals who value their lives just as we do, look no further than these pigs and then realize that deciding to eat them supports a harrowing journey to slaughter, crash or no crash. PETA is calling for their bid for freedom—as they ran down the interstate—to be honored by sending them to a sanctuary, not a slaughterhouse. And we appeal to all human beings—called  “long pigs” by cannibals—to go vegan.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to eat”—notes that before pigs are loaded onto trucks bound for slaughterhouses, they suffer immensely on industrialized meat farms. Sows are squeezed into narrow metal stalls barely larger than their bodies and kept almost constantly pregnant or nursing. Pigs’ tails are chopped off, their teeth are cut with pliers, and males are castrated—all without any painkillers. At slaughterhouses, they are hung upside down and bled to death, often while still conscious.

More information about pigs is available on PETA’s website.