After Millions of Animals Die in Florence, PETA Offers Escape Plan

More than 4.1 million chickens and turkeys and 5,500 pigs died during Hurricane Florence. Many of them were hopelessly trapped inside the filthy sheds that they were warehoused in.

To stop more preventable deaths, PETA is planning to place this billboard throughout the eastern United States, in cities where many of these animals would have ended up on plates had they not died in the floods:

The picture was taken by photographer Kelly Guerin, who documented the sad fates of animals who were abandoned and left defenseless against the storm and flooding. Every day since the hurricane, PETA’s fieldworkers have been wading through chest-deep water, rescuing every discarded animal they find. But on secured farms that are inaccessible to rescuers, animals were simply left to die.

Meat producers don’t see the animals they raise as individuals who experience love, happiness, fear, and pain and who value their own lives and don’t want to die. They only see them as commodities that can be written off as financial losses. In an open letter to farmers, PETA demanded that next time, they give the animals at least a fighting chance by opening the barn doors, if nothing else.

Hurricane Florence floodwaters also breached the pork industry’s massive manure lagoons, potentially contaminating the region’s water supplies with tens of millions of gallons of filth.

Just by not eating other animals, every single human can spare nearly 200 individuals each year a senseless death. The combined impact of everyone who says no to this violent industry is tremendously helpful in stopping more animals from being bred for humans’ benefit and preventing tragedies like these deaths in Hurricane Florence from happening again.

Just imagine if we all did it.