Houston Hospitals Surrounded by PETA Message: If You Serve Sausage, Might as Well Throw in a Smoke

For Immediate Release:
March 16, 2026

Contact:
Nicole Perreira 202-483-7382

PETA has a new prescription for hospitals in the Texas Medical Center: Get cancer-causing meat off the menu. The provocative message appears on kiosks in view of Memorial Hermann–Texas Medical Center and Texas Children’s Hospital, which serve processed meats such as bacon and sausage—despite the World Health Organization placing these meats in the same category of known carcinogens as tobacco smoking and asbestos. PETA has also sent letters to the hospitals’ administrators urging them to replace processed meats—all linked to colorectal and other types of cancer—with healthy vegan meals.

“Hospitals dishing out deli meats makes as much health sense as handing out cigarettes with dessert,” says PETA founder Ingrid Newkirk. “PETA is calling on Houston hospitals to get killer cold cuts and toxic turkey bacon out of their cafeterias and urges anyone who values their health to go vegan.”

PETA notes that going vegan not only reduces a person’s risk of suffering from cancer and other diseases but also spares animals from a lifetime of misery and a violent death. Pigs are soothed by music, cows have best friends, and chickens dream when they sleep, just as humans do—but in today’s meat, egg, and dairy industries, the animals are raised in filthy, crowded conditions, trucked to slaughterhouses, and violently killed. PETA’s free vegan starter kit can help anyone thinking of making the switch.

PETA’s ads are located on five kiosks on Fannin Street, Main Street, and Cambridge Street near the Texas Medical Center.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to eat”—points out that Every Animal Is Someone and offers free Empathy Kits for people who need a lesson in kindness. For more information, please visit PETA.org or follow PETA on X, Facebook, or Instagram.