PETA Seeks Roadside Memorial for Turkeys Killed in Iowa Semitruck Accident

Monument Would Urge Drivers to Go Vegan

For Immediate Release:
April 23, 2014

Contact:
Sophia Charchuk 202-483-7382

An accident involving a truck hauling turkeys to slaughter resulted in the deaths of more than 500 of the birds last week, and PETA is seeking to commemorate the lives of the animals with a roadside memorial. Alex Moore, an Iowa resident and a PETA staffer, has just written to the Iowa Department of Transportation (Iowa DOT) on PETA’s behalf to ask for permission to erect a 10-foot-tall memorial tombstone in honor of the turkeys killed when the truck overturned in Sioux City.Moore and PETA hope the memorial will offer food for thought to motorists in Iowa, a state with a robust poultry industry.

“This tribute will remind commuters that the best way to prevent tragedies such as this one is to go vegan, because turkeys shouldn’t have to make terrifying trips to slaughterhouses at all,” wrote Moore in her letter to Iowa DOT. “The memorial will also prevent future accidents and make the roads safer for everyone by reminding tractor-trailer drivers of their responsibility to the thousands of animals they haul every year as well as to the motorists whose lives are endangered when a tractor-trailer crashes.”

Turkeys spend their entire lives wading through waste on factory farmsbefore being crammed into trucks and transported through all sorts of weather extremes to slaughterhouses, where they’re then killed for food.

For more information, please visit PETA.org.