Will Pioneer Plaza Get an Animal-Friendly Makeover? Cow Statue With a Vegan Message Is Proposed by PETA
For Immediate Release:
July 17, 2024
Contact:
Moira Colley 202-483-7382
In time for the city’s summer tourism season, PETA sent a letter today to Director of the Office of Arts & Culture Martine Elyse Philippe asking her to give Pioneer Plaza’s Dallas “Cattle Drive” sculpture an update that acknowledges the harm caused by animal agriculture. The proposed art installation would feature a mother cow nuzzling her calf with the message “Meat and Dairy Drive Us All to Our Deaths. Go Vegan.”
In the appeal, PETA points out that the meat and dairy industries not only kill cows but also produce fat- and cholesterol-filled foods and spew methane, which is 80 times more powerful than carbon dioxide in warming the Earth. PETA’s proposed sculpture would offer a counterpoint to the existing artwork—which celebrates the exploitation of cows—by recognizing that more than 33 million of them are killed for food in the U.S. annually and that mother cows used for their milk call out and search frantically for their calves after they’re cruelly torn away from them shortly after birth.
“The meat and dairy industries pump out dangerous, planet-killing emissions, all for people to have a fleeting taste of animals’ flesh and bodily fluids,” says PETA President Ingrid Newkirk. “PETA is urging Dallas’ arts director to update Pioneer Plaza with a statue fit for the 21st century and encourage everyone to do right by animals, humans’ health, and the Earth by going vegan.”
PETA recently made a similar request to display a statue of a sheep—called “E(n)d Shearin’” after the singer Ed Sheeran—in downtown San Angelo, Texas, which has 110 sheep statues but not one that addresses how sheep are often beaten, mutilated, and violently killed for wool. PETA’s proposed statue, which is decorated with anti-wool messages created by renowned New Yorker cartoonist Harry Bliss, was approved by city leaders in late December and is currently on display at the San Angelo City Hall Annex.
Each person who goes vegan spares nearly 200 animals every year; reduces their own risk of suffering from cancer, heart disease, strokes, diabetes, and obesity; and dramatically shrinks their carbon footprint. PETA’s free vegan starter kit can help those looking to make the switch.
PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to eat”— points out that Every Animal Is Someone and offers free Empathy Kits for people who need a lesson in kindness. For more information, please visit PETA.org or follow the group on X, Facebook, or Instagram.
