Plea to Local Slaughterhouse: Those Are People You’re Killing

For Immediate Release:
February 16, 2022

Contact:
Megan Wiltsie 202-483-7382

Because Illinois is one of the country’s top pig-producing states, PETA is placing two sky-high messages outside local slaughterhouse Park Packing, reminding everyone that pigs are living beings with thoughts and feelings who don’t want to die for anyone’s dinner. If you look at a pig closely, you’ll see a person in a body not very unlike your own—one with two eyes, two ears, a nose, skin, and, under it all, a brain and a beating heart.

“When people allow themselves to see that pigs feel pain and fear and value their lives, just as human beings do, the only bacon that will touch their lips is vegan bacon,” says PETA President Ingrid Newkirk. “PETA encourages everyone to be honest about it and recognize pigs as the unique individuals they are.”

Pigs are intelligent, sensitive, and naturally clean beings who form strong bonds with other pigs, yet nearly all of the 121 million of them killed for food in the U.S. every year are raised in their own waste on crowded, filthy farms. It’s standard meat-industry practice to chop off piglets’ tails, pull their teeth out with pliers, and castrate the males—all without any pain relief. At the slaughterhouse, workers hang pigs upside down, sometimes while they’re still conscious, and bleed them to death. For what? A fleeting taste that we can live without.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to eat” and which opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview—offers a free vegan starter kit, a guide to vegan bacon brands, and other resources. For more information, please visit PETA.org or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.

PETA’s billboards are located at 4000 S. Ashland Ave. and 3742 S. Ashland Ave., Chicago.