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

PETA Memorial Would Encourage Everyone to Keep Animals out of Transport Trucks by Going Vegan

For Immediate Release:
June 13, 2018

Contact:
Audrey Shircliff 202-483-7382

In honor of the pigs who died when a truck carrying them overturned on Interstate 35 near the eastbound Interstate 80 ramp in Des Moines on the morning of June 7, PETA plans to place a billboard by the crash site showing a pig’s face next to the words “I’m ME, Not MEAT. See the Individual. Go Vegan.“

“Dozens of sensitive pigs died in this wreck, and those who survived were rounded up and presumably shipped off to be strung upside down and slaughtered,” says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. “PETA hopes to pay tribute to their too-short lives with a billboard urging people to prevent future suffering by keeping pigs and all other animals off their plates.”

Before pigs are packed together and transported in all weather extremes to slaughterhouses, mother pigs are squeezed into narrow metal stalls barely larger than their bodies and kept almost constantly pregnant or nursing. Pigs’ tails are chopped off, their teeth are cut with pliers, and males are castrated—all without any painkillers. At the slaughterhouse, they’re hung upside down and bled to death, often while still conscious.

PETA, whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to eat,” notes that there have been at least 10 truck crashes in Iowa—a top pork-producing state—involving animals in the past three years alone.

For more information, please visit PETA.org.