Giant Chicken Has a Pointed Message for Perdue

For Immediate Release:
September 21, 2021

Contact:
Megan Wiltsie 202-483-7382

PETA is bringing Perdue Farms executives—and patrons of restaurants that sell bird-based meals—face to face with who’s on their plates, through billboards that just went up on Main and, fittingly, Byrd streets.

“Chickens are smart, social, sensitive animals who think, feel, and value their own lives, just as we do,” says PETA President Ingrid Newkirk. “PETA’s billboards encourage everyone to think about the face behind the food and opt for tasty vegan meats that let birds keep the wings nature gave them.”

Perdue is notorious for cramming tens of thousands of chickens into filthy sheds reeking of ammonia fumes from accumulated waste, conditions in which disease can spread quickly. The birds are bred to grow such unnaturally large upper bodies that their legs often become crippled under the weight. At the slaughterhouse, their throats are cut, often while they’re still conscious, and many are scalded to death in defeathering tanks.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to eat”—opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information on PETA’s newsgathering and reporting, please visit PETA.org or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.

The billboards are located at 419 E. Main St. and 401 Byrd St., both less than a mile from Perdue Farms and near Royal Farms, Arby’s, Subway, Back Street Grill, MayaBella’s Pizza & Wings, Sub Runners, Pinches Tipsy Tacos, and many other meaty eateries.