PETA Joins Houston's Pro-Life Debate

Billboard Will Challenge Pro-Lifers to Embrace Vegan Diet as Controversy Swirls Around New Planned Parenthood Clinic

For Immediate Release:
January 13, 2010

Contact:
Michael Lyubinsky 757-622-7382

Houston -- When pro-life supporters arrive in Houston on January 18 to protest the future opening of a six-story Planned Parenthood facility, they may be met with a challenge. That's because PETA is negotiating with outdoor advertisers to place a billboard ad near the building--an ad that shows newly hatched chicks and reads, "Pro-Life? Go Vegan. PETA."

PETA's goal? To urge people in the pro-life movement to respect the sanctity of life every time they eat--by rejecting the slaughterhouse.
Click here to see the billboard. 

"Eating meat supports horrible cruelty to animals, and of course, it also entails killing them," says PETA Vice President Bruce Friedrich. "Everyone who is 'pro-life' has the opportunity to show it every time he or she sits down to eat--by choosing a vegetarian diet."

More than 15 billion animals are slaughtered for food in the U.S. alone each year:

*  Chickens' throats are cut while they are still conscious, and they are routinely scalded to death in defeathering tanks.

*  Calves raised for veal are taken from their mothers just days after birth and are shackled in tiny, dark stalls, where their joints swell from standing on waste-covered slatted floors or hard, filthy concrete. 

*  Piglets are castrated and have their ears cut, their teeth clipped, and their tails chopped off--all without painkillers.

*  On the decks of fishing boats, fish suffer from painful decompression, suffocate, or are cut open while they're still alive.

For more information, please visit PETA.org.