New PETA Billboard to Make a Splash at Urological Seminar

For Immediate Release:
June 12, 2012

Contact:
Kristin Richards 202-483-7382  

Vivid Ad Highlights Link Between UTIs and Chicken Consumption

Chicago -- As doctors head to Chicago for this weekend's seminar on women's urological issues, PETA is looking to place its new "Feeling a Little … Raw?" billboard in the area in order to encourage women to give their urinary tracts and animals a break by keeping chicken and other meat out of their meals. The billboard, which shows a woman sitting uncomfortably on a toilet next to a package of raw chicken flesh, comes in the wake of recent research from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention linking urinary tract infections (UTIs) in women to E. coli found in factory-farmed chicken meat.

"Because of the fecal matter on factory-farmed fowl, consuming chicken means risking urinary tract infections," says PETA President Ingrid E. Newkirk. "If the cruelty to birds kept crammed together for today's supermarket meat isn't enough to make people go vegan, maybe the idea of frequent, painful trips to the ladies' room will do the trick."

In addition to carrying a risk of E. coli contamination, meat, eggs, and dairy products contain no fiber and are loaded with artery-clogging saturated fat and cholesterol. According to the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, vegetarians are less prone to heart disease, diabetes, obesity, and cancer than meat-eaters are.

On factory farms, chickens are crammed by the tens of thousands into filthy sheds and bred and drugged to grow such unnaturally large upper bodies that their legs often become crippled under the weight. At the slaughterhouse, their throats are cut while they are still conscious, and millions of conscious birds are scalded to death in defeathering tanks every year.

For more information, please visit PETA.org.