First ‘Veganuary,’ Now ‘ThanksVegan’: PETA Launches ‘Think Before You Eat’ Ad Blitz Across Canada

For Immediate Release:
September 25, 2023

Contact:
Sara Groves 202-483-7382

Ahead of Thanksgiving (October 9), an unmissable appeal from an endearing young tom turkey—cocking his head as if to ask, “Why would you eat me?!”—is roosting on Richards Street as part of a Canadian campaign urging everyone to celebrate a humane, healthy, and environmentally positive vegan holiday this year.

“When it comes to having feelings like love and joy, protecting their families, and valuing their freedom, turkeys are individuals to emulate, not eat,” says PETA President Ingrid Newkirk. “PETA encourages everyone to save rather than serve them.”

Turkeys are doting and resourceful parents and spirited explorers who typically live up to five years in nature, but those raised for food are slaughtered within their first six months of life—and millions are killed each year for Thanksgiving alone. The young birds are hung by their feet from metal shackles and dragged through an electrified bath, and they’re often still conscious when their throats are slit and they’re dumped into scalding-hot defeathering tanks.

PETA’s billboard is located at 827 Richards St. near turkey-selling purveyors including IGA, Nesters Market, Starbucks, Tim Hortons, and H-Mart Downtown. The group is also erecting the ad in Ottawa and Calgary, Alberta.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to eat” and which opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview—offers a “ThanksVegan” recipe guide, which can be accessed here. For more information, please visit PETA.org, listen to The PETA Podcast, or follow the group on X (formerly Twitter), Facebook, or Instagram.