‘Close the Slaughterhouses’ Billboard Rises Near A.F.G. Facility

With Hundreds of COVID-19 Cases Linked to Area Meat Plants, PETA’s Ad Reminds Everyone That ‘No One Needs to Kill to Eat’

For Immediate Release:
May 6, 2020

Contact:
Megan Wiltsie 202-483-7382

“Save the Workers, Their Families, and the Animals.” That’s the message on a new digital PETA billboard demanding that slaughterhouses be shut down—and it’s running right across the street from an American Foods Group slaughterhouse.

The new ad follows President Trump’s executive, but not binding, order for slaughterhouses nationwide to remain open despite widespread coronavirus infections. Nearly 1,000 workers at local slaughterhouses have tested positive for COVID-19, including at least 130 American Foods Group employees.

“From the deadly pandemics bred in slaughterhouses and meat markets to heart disease, obesity, and cancer, which are linked to eating animals, the meat industry is toxic for our health, let alone a place of death for animals,” says PETA President Ingrid Newkirk. “PETA stands ready with free vegan starter kits, mentor services, and recipes to help everyone protect themselves, their communities, and animals by going vegan.”

The novel coronavirus originated in a Chinese “wet market,” where live and dead animals are sold for human consumption; swine flu began on a U.S. factory farm; and other influenza viruses have been traced to chickens. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warns that approximately 75% of recently emerged infectious diseases affecting humans originated in other animals.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to eat” and which opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview—recently placed a full-page ad in The Washington Post urging Americans to move away from meat.

The billboard is located at 1725 WI-54, across the street from the American Foods Group slaughterhouse at 544 Acme St., in Green Bay.

For more information, please visit PETA.org.