PETA Cow Declares ‘I’m ME, Not MEAT’ on Billboards in Cattle Country
Massive Ads Near McDonald’s Urge Travelers to Skip Drive-Through Burgers
For Immediate Release:
December 14, 2016
Contact:
Megan Wiltsie 202-483-7382
Just in time for the holidays, a pair of PETA billboards promoting kindness to cows has gone up around Dallas—in the heart of cattle country and just a stone’s throw from two McDonald’s restaurants.
The new billboards—which show a cow’s face next to the words “I’m ME, Not MEAT. See the Individual. Go Vegan”—are located on Stemmons Freeway, right at the exit for the McDonald’s at Empire Central Drive, and on E.R.L. Thornton Freeway, right outside the McDonald’s west of N. Jim Miller Road.
“Just like us, cows are made of flesh and blood, feel pain and fear, and value their own lives,” says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. “This busy holiday travel season, PETA is encouraging people to show compassion for these gentle animals by skipping drive-through burgers and choosing healthy vegan fare instead.”
PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to eat”—notes that intelligent, curious cows in the meat industry spend their short lives on cramped, filthy feedlots. Calves are torn away from their mothers within hours of birth and are castrated and branded without painkillers. Long before they reach their natural life expectancy, they’re trucked through all weather extremes to slaughterhouses, where workers shoot them in the head with a captive-bolt gun, hang them up by one leg, cut their throats, and skin them—often while they’re still conscious.
The Dallas ads are part of PETA’s new nationwide series in which animals speak out against the industries that abuse them. At the Mall of America, sheep take on the wool industry, while geese in Silicon Valley condemn the cruelty of down and foie gras. Chickens in Arkansas put the meat industry on blast; pigs in Washington, D.C., urge diners to pass on pork; and lizards encourage shoppers in high-end Miami stores to steer clear of exotic-skin handbags.
For more information, please visit PETA.org.
