Billboard to Pay Tribute to Chickens Killed in Barn Blaze

PETA Memorial Will Encourage People to Help Prevent More Animals’ Deaths by Going Vegan

For Immediate Release:
January 2, 2020

Contact:
Brooke Rossi 202-483-7382

In honor of the nearly 16,000 chickens who died when a barn on Pepper Road caught fire on December 20, PETA plans to place a billboard in the area pointing out who’s responsible for the birds’ deaths: everyone who hasn’t gone vegan.

“Every single chicken killed in this fire was an individual who was surely terrified and in pain as smoke and flames engulfed the barn,” says PETA Director of Campaigns Danielle Katz. “PETA urges everyone to prevent more animals from suffering and dying in 2020 by opting for delicious vegan meals.”

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to eat”—notes that chickens killed for their flesh are crammed by the tens of thousands into filthy sheds and bred to grow such unnaturally large upper bodies that their legs often become crippled under the weight. At slaughterhouses, their throats are cut, often while they’re still conscious, and many are scalded to death in defeathering tanks. Each person who goes vegan saves the lives of nearly 200 animals every year.

PETA is planning to place a similar ad in West End, North Carolina, where 19,000 chickens were killed in a barn fire on Thanksgiving, and in West Alexandria, Ohio, where an unknown number of chickens died in a barn fire on December 19.

PETA opposes speciesism, the human-supremacist worldview that other species are nothing more than commodities. For more information, please visit PETA.org.