‘I’m ME, Not MEAT’ Octopus Billboard Up Now Near Koreatown Restaurants
PETA Ad Shaming Restaurants That Serve Live, Chopped-Up Cephalopods Urges Viewers to Go Vegan
For Immediate Release:
July 17, 2018
Contact:
Audrey Shircliff 202-483-7382
PETA has placed a billboard showing a smart and sensitive octopus alongside the words “I’m ME, Not MEAT. See the Individual. Go Vegan” near several restaurants in Koreatown that serve live octopuses to diners in a vile dish called sannakji. One of these restaurants is T Equals Fish, which was the subject of a PETA investigation that showed the restaurant’s chefs chopping up and mutilating animals before serving them—still alive and writhing—to customers.
The ad is located at the intersection of Wilshire Boulevard and S. Western Avenue in Koreatown, Los Angeles, and will be in place through August 5.
“Serving up the severed legs of an octopus while the rest of the animal languishes in agony in the kitchen is like something out of a horror movie,” says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. “There’s no difference between the pain that an octopus feels when being torn limb from limb and what a dog or a cat would feel in the same situation, and PETA’s ad urges everyone to condemn this horrendous cruelty and go vegan.”
Octopuses are highly intelligent, playful, and resourceful—and scientists have verified that they’re able to feel pain. PETA’s exposé revealed that a chef at T Equals Fish—one of over a dozen restaurants in California that serve live animals—cut off a live octopus’s limbs with a butcher knife as the animal flailed about and struggled. She was kept alive until customers had ordered all her remaining limbs, and then the chef killed her by ripping open her mantle and tearing out the intestinal contents.
PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to eat”—also plans to run the ads near restaurants that serve live octopuses in Toronto.
Every person who goes vegan spares nearly 200 animals a year daily suffering and a terrifying, painful death. PETA offers a free vegan starter kit full of recipes, tips, and more. For more information, please visit PETA.org.
