Group Offers to Help with Costs, Create Jobs

For Immediate Release:
March 11, 2009

Contact:
Ashley Byrne 757-622-7382

Baton Rouge, La. -- This morning, PETA sent a letter to Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal suggesting that in these days of raised environmental, health, and humane concerns over factory farming, he should stop looking for another chicken company to buy Pilgrim's Pride's closing Farmerville slaughterhouse. Instead, the group is asking him to use the state funds that he has offered the potential buyer to help PETA purchase the plant and turn it into American's first chicken empathy museum.

The museum could feature exhibits such as video footage from research conducted at Bristol University (U.K.) showing how smart chickens are. It could also have a restaurant that would serve heart-friendly and delicious faux-chicken nuggets and a gift shop that could provide free plush chickens for kids, with tags reading, "I Am Not a Nugget!" Outside the museum, children could clamber through a preserved chicken-transport truck to experience how cramped and uncomfortable the trucks are. The museum would also provide area residents with much-needed jobs that are not the high-risk and psychologically damaging jobs associated with slaughter operations.

PETA knows Pilgrim's Pride well: The group's undercover investigation of a major Pilgrim's Pride slaughterhouse revealed that workers were stomping on chickens, kicking them, twisting their heads off, spitting tobacco into their eyes, and spray-painting their faces.

"Because the meat industry has a history of animal and worker abuse, a chicken company is not the kind of business that you want to pay to move into your community," says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. "We urge Governor Jindal to look to the future by helping turn a shameful place built on cruelty and killing into a monument to compassion."

For more information, please visit PETA's Blog.

PETA's letter to Gov. Jindal follows.

March 11, 2009

The Honorable Bobby Jindal
Governor of Louisiana

Dear Governor Jindal:

I am writing on behalf of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) and our more than 2 million members and supporters -- including thousands across Louisiana -- with a suggestion regarding the closing of the Pilgrim's Pride slaughterhouse in Farmerville. Using our funds and the state assistance that you offered to potential buyers, we'd like to work with you to purchase the slaughterhouse and turn it into the Chicken Empathy Museum. In addition to creating jobs, the museum would convert a building built upon cruelty into a tribute to compassion and kindness.

Billions of chickens spend their entire lives in cramped, filthy sheds. They are drugged and bred to grow large so fast that their legs cannot withstand their weight and often become crippled. Chickens have their throats cut open while they're still conscious, and according to the USDA, millions are scalded to death in tanks of hot water. A PETA investigation at a major Pilgrim's Pride slaughterhouse documented that workers were stomping on chickens, kicking them, and violently slamming them against floors and walls. Workers also ripped the animals' beaks off, twisted their heads off, spat tobacco into their eyes and mouths, spray-painted their faces, and squeezed their bodies so hard that the birds expelled feces -- all while the chickens were still alive. Dan Rather described the carnage on the CBS Evening News, "[T]here's no mistaking what [the video] depicts: cruelty to animals, chickens horribly mistreated ... ."

The Chicken Empathy Museum will have educational displays that highlight interesting facts about chickens, including that chickens are intelligent animals with mental abilities comparable to cats, dogs, and even primates and that in nature, mother hens cluck to their unborn chicks, who chirp back from inside their shells.

Delicious faux chicken (made from healthy plant protein) will be available in the Chicken Empathy Restaurant, along with an array of other tasty vegetarian foods. And as a gift from PETA, each visitor who is 12 years old or younger will receive a plush chicken with a tag reading, "I Am Not a Nugget!"

Please contact me so that we can begin the planning process. Thank you for your consideration.

Sincerely,

Tracy Reiman
Executive Vice President