Update: ‘I’m ME, Not MEAT’ Billboard Now Up Near Site of Truck Crash

PETA Memorial Honors 16 Cows Killed in Wreck, Encourages People to Keep Animals off the Road by Going Vegan

For Immediate Release:
March 27, 2019

Contact:
Audrey Shircliff 202-483-7382

In memory of the 16 cows who suffered and died when a truck carrying them overturned on U.S. Highway 2 on February 11, PETA has placed a billboard on the highway, just north of Walnut Street W., that shows a cow’s face next to the words “I’m ME, Not MEAT. See the Individual. Go Vegan.” It will be in place for four weeks.

“If this message of compassion inspires just one driver to go vegan, these gentle cows won’t have died in vain,” says PETA Director Danielle Katz. “PETA’s billboard pays tribute to their too-short lives and encourages motorists to help prevent tragedies like this one by keeping all animals off their plates.”

Before slaughter, cows are typically loaded onto trucks bound for cramped, filthy feedlots without protection from the elements or temperature extremes. Many are sick on arrival and die shortly afterward, and those who survive eventually face a terrifying trip to the slaughterhouse, where workers shoot them in the head with a captive-bolt gun, hang them up by one leg, and cut their throat—often while they’re still conscious and able to feel pain.

In 2018 alone, PETA made note of nearly 100 crashes involving transport trucks carrying animals in the U.S.—and those are just the reported accidents. So far in 2019, PETA has already noted more than two dozen accidents involving vehicles transporting animals used for food.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to eat”—opposes speciesism, which is a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETA.org.