‘I’m ME, Not MEAT’ Billboard Aims to Honor Cows Killed in Truck Crash

PETA Memorial Would Encourage Everyone to Keep Animals out of Transport Trucks by Going Vegan

For Immediate Release:
June 6, 2018

Contact:
Audrey Shircliff 202-483-7382

In honor of the cows who died when a truck carrying them overturned 8 miles outside Amarillo on Highway 287 near Reclamation Plant Road on May 28, PETA plans to place a billboard near the crash site showing a cow’s face next to the words “I’m ME, Not MEAT. See the Individual. Go Vegan.“

“Several gentle cows died in this wreck, and those who survived were rounded up and presumably shipped off to the slaughterhouse, where their throats were slit,” says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. “PETA hopes to pay tribute to their too-short lives with a billboard urging people to prevent future suffering by keeping cows and all other animals off their plates.”

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to eat”—notes that before cows are loaded onto trucks bound for slaughterhouses, they’re often confined to cramped, filthy feedlots without protection from the elements or temperature extremes. Calves are torn away from their mothers within hours of birth and are castrated and branded without painkillers. At the slaughterhouse, workers shoot cows in the head with a captive-bolt gun, hang them up by one leg, and cut their throats—often while they’re still conscious and able to feel pain.

In February, a truck crash on Interstate 27 in Amarillo resulted in numerous cows running loose on the highway. In addition, several cows have wandered onto Highway 287 from nearby fields, causing traffic accidents and at least one human death.

For more information, please visit PETA.org.