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

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

For Immediate Release:
March 4, 2019

Contact:
Audrey Shircliff 202-483-7382

In honor of the cows who were injured and killed when a truck carrying them crashed on westbound Interstate 84 on February 27, PETA plans to place a billboard near the crash site—about 15 miles northwest of Mountain Home—showing a cow’s face next to the words “I’m ME, Not MEAT. See the Individual. Go Vegan.“

“At least eight gentle cows died as a result of this wreck, and those who survived will presumably end up under the slaughterhouse knife,” says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. “PETA hopes to pay tribute to their short lives with a billboard urging people to help prevent future suffering by keeping cows and all other animals off their plate.”

PETA’s motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to eat,” and the group opposes speciesism, a supremacist worldview. Before cows are loaded onto trucks for long journeys to the slaughterhouse in all weather extremes, they’re often confined to cramped, filthy feedlots without protection from the elements. Calves are torn away from their mothers within hours of birth and are castrated and branded without pain relief. At the slaughterhouse, workers shoot cows in the head with a captive-bolt gun, hang them up by one leg, and cut their throat—often while they’re still conscious and able to feel pain.

In 2018 alone, there were more than 90 accidents in the U.S. involving trucks used to transport chickens, pigs, turkeys, and cows. So far in 2019, PETA has already noted more than two dozen accidents involving vehicles transporting animals used for food.

For more information, please visit PETA.org.