You Get a Day Off Work. I Get Worked to Death.’: PETA Hen Makes Vegan Plea to Restaurant-Goers

For Immediate Release:
August 30, 2023

Contact:
Nicole Perreira 202-483-7382

Ahead of Labor Day weekend, people flocking to restaurants near Coldwater Road and Coliseum Boulevard will see a sky-high message courtesy of PETA, pointing out that there are some individuals who never get a day off: the billions of chickens who are slaughtered for their flesh or exploited for their eggs while being confined to filthy, cramped enclosures.

“Chickens don’t get even one sick day, let alone a holiday to rest or do anything they enjoy, like taking a dust bath or stretching their wings,” says PETA President Ingrid Newkirk. “PETA urges everyone to see chickens as the living, feeling beings they are and choose to keep them off their plates.”

In the meat industry, chickens are bred to grow such unnaturally large upper bodies that their legs often become crippled under the weight. Those used for eggs are either confined to cramped wire cages, in which they don’t even have enough room to spread their wings, or crammed into sheds by the thousands, where each bird has barely more than a square foot of space. After their bodies are exhausted and their egg production drops, they are shipped to slaughterhouses, where their throats are cut, often while they’re still conscious, and many are scalded to death in defeathering tanks.

Each person who goes vegan spares nearly 200 animals every year, dramatically shrinks their carbon footprint, and reduces their own risk of suffering from cancer, heart disease, strokes, diabetes, and obesity.

The billboard is located at 4403 Coldwater Rd., Fort Wayne, in the parking lot in front of the IHOP. This ad will also run in Salem, Oregon.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to eat”—opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview, and offers a free vegan starter kit on its website. For more information on PETA’s investigative newsgathering and reporting, please visit PETA.org, listen to The PETA Podcast, or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.