‘I’m ME, Not MEAT!’: PETA’s Chicken Trolls Harold’s Chicken Shack

New Billboard Could Ruffle Feathers Near Iconic Chicago Eatery

For Immediate Release:
March 13, 2017

Contact:
Megan Wiltsie 202-483-7382

This spring, PETA is springing a surprise on people walking by or considering going into Harold’s Chicken Shack: A new billboard near the well-known eatery in Wicker Park shows a chicken’s face next to the words “I’m ME, Not MEAT. See the Individual. Go Vegan.”

The billboard—which provides a contrast to the Harold’s Chicken Shack logo of a cook chasing down a chicken with a cleaver, something everyone who has a chicken companion or is a vegetarian finds offensive—is located at the intersection of N. Milwaukee Avenue and N. Paulina Street.

“PETA’s chicken wants people to consider that chickens are individuals who can no more be reduced to a combination of thighs, breasts, and gizzards than we or our beloved dogs can,” says PETA President Ingrid Newkirk. “This spring chicken offensive is actually inoffensive and a reminder that, like humans, chickens are made of flesh and blood, feel pain and fear, and value their own lives.”

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to eat”—notes that chickens killed for their flesh are crammed by the tens of thousands into filthy sheds and bred to grow such unnaturally large upper bodies that their legs often become crippled under the weight. At the slaughterhouse, their throats are often cut while they’re still conscious, and many are scalded to death in defeathering tanks.

For more information, please visit PETA.org.