New Billboard Clues Consumer in to Cruel Chicken-Slaughter Method

PETA Offers Food for Thought After Reports Reveal That One-Third of Chickens in California Are Still Conscious When Their Throats Are Cut

For Immediate Release:
November 20, 2015

Contact:
Sophia Charchuk 202-483-7382

You won’t find this message on any meat package: “1 out of 3 Chickens Are Still Conscious at the Moment of Slaughter. Go Vegan.” PETA is launching a new statewide consumer-awareness campaign, starting with a billboard that just went up in the heart of Sacramento—the capital of a state that slaughters 250 million chickens every year. Industry reports reveal that the baths of electrified water that chickens are dragged through, which are intended to induce seizures and render chickens insensible to pain, fail to stun the birds 33 percent of the time—meaning that they’re still able to feel pain as their throats are slit.

PETA’s billboard is located at 1600 Broadway, facing west on the south side of the street.

“PETA is offering food for thought about an industry that electrocutes and bleeds out millions of sensitive, social chickens every year,” says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. “Sparing these animals a painful, terrifying death is as easy as choosing delicious, cruelty-free vegan meals.”

Every year, an estimated 83 million chickens in California are still conscious when their throats are slit, and an estimated 7 million are still alive as they’re thrown into tanks of scalding-hot water, where they drown or are boiled to death.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to eat”—plans to place similar billboards (photos available here) in other cities across California.

For more information, please visit PETA.org.