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

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

For Immediate Release:
March 10, 2020

Contact:
Brooke Rossi 202-483-7382

In honor of the young cows who were injured and killed when a truck carrying them crashed on an off-ramp of the Pennsylvania Turnpike near Irwin on March 3, PETA plans to place a billboard in the area that proclaims, “See the Individual. Go Vegan.“

“This crash ended the lives of four gentle calves and compounded the misery of the others, who are likely destined to be killed for food,” 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.”

The young cows appeared to be the breed most often used by the dairy industry. Cows used for dairy are artificially inseminated (raped when a person inserts an arm into the rectum and a metal rod into the vagina), and calves are torn away from their loving mothers within a day of birth. Male calves are frequently shipped off to be slaughtered for veal, while females endure the same fate as their mothers: repeated forced pregnancies until their bodies eventually break down, at which point they’re slaughtered for cheap meat. Each person who goes vegan saves the lives of nearly 200 cows, pigs, chickens, and other animals every year.

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 vital if we are to combat catastrophic climate change.

PETA notes that there were more than 100 crashes in 2019 involving trucks carrying animals used for food—and there have already been 23 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.