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

PETA Memorial Will Encourage People to Keep Animals out of Transport Vehicles by Going Vegan

For Immediate Release:
February 24, 2020

Contact:
Brooke Rossi 202-483-7382

In honor of the cows who were injured and killed when a truck carrying them crashed on I-40 near Thomasville Road on February 18, PETA plans to place a billboard near the crash site that proclaims, “See the Individual. Go Vegan.“

“This incident caused gentle cows to experience a terrifying death on the highway, and those who survived were rounded up and presumably taken to slaughter,” says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. “PETA’s ad encourages anyone disturbed by the thought of animals suffering on the side of the road or facing the slaughterhouse knife to go vegan.”

Cows in the meat industry are often confined to cramped, filthy feedlots without protection from the elements. Calves are torn away from their mothers within hours of birth and are castrated and branded without pain relief. At the slaughterhouse, workers shoot cows 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.

Animal agriculture is responsible for nearly a fifth of human-induced greenhouse-gas emissions. More than 80% of the Amazon rainforest that’s been cleared since 1970 is used for grazing or for growing food for cattle who are ultimately slaughtered for meat. According to the United Nations, a global switch to vegan eating is necessary to combat catastrophic climate change. In addition, each person who goes vegan saves the lives of nearly 200 animals every year.

PETA notes that there were more than 100 crashes in 2019 involving trucks carrying animals used for food—and there have already been 20 since the start of 2020.

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.