Billboard to Pay Tribute to Cows Killed in Barn Blaze

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

For Immediate Release:
June 17, 2020

Contact:
Brooke Rossi 202-483-7382

In honor of the more than 50 mother cows and calves who died when a barn at a dairy farm on Porter Road caught fire on June 11, PETA plans to place a billboard in the area pointing out who’s responsible for their deaths: everyone who still purchases dairy milk as well as cheese, cream, and yogurt made from the milk of factory-farmed cows.

“Each of these cows was an individual, a mother or a youngster, who felt pain and fear as smoke and flames engulfed them,” says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. “PETA urges everyone to practice kindness by going vegan and rejecting the dairy industry and its cruelty.”

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.

PETA notes that going vegan spares animals immense suffering and helps prevent future pandemics. The COVID-19 pandemic originated in a meat market, and influenza viruses have originated in pigs and chickens.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to eat”—opposes speciesism, the human-supremacist worldview that other species are nothing more than commodities. For more information, please visit PETA.org.