Billboard Calls for an End to the Death Penalty and Botched Executions—at Mealtimes

PETA Wants to Offer Food for Thought Following Recent Decision to Ban Capital Punishment

For Immediate Release:
June 1, 2015

Contact:
Shakira Croce 202-483-7382

PETA is taking a page from the book of Nebraska lawmakers—who recently passed legislation abolishing the death penalty in the state—by negotiating with advertisers to erect a billboard close to the state capitol building calling on citizens to do their part to spare the billions of innocent animals who will end up on death row this year alone by going vegan. The billboard, which shows a pair of terrified pigs awaiting slaughter, reads, “End the Death Penalty for Animals. Go Vegan.”

“No matter where you stand on capital punishment, animals killed by the meat industry are violently slaughtered by means most of us would never condone for even the worst criminals, including in botched executions, a topic that dominated the death penalty debate,” says PETA President Ingrid E. Newkirk. “PETA’s billboard will remind caring people that all of us can spare animals suffering and death just by choosing vegan meals.”

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to eat”—has documented botched executions throughout the meat industry. More than 1 million pigs die each year on severely crowded transport trucks before they reach the slaughterhouse. Animals who survive the grueling journey are “stunned” by electrocution—but this method commonly fails, leaving the animals to feel every agonizing, terrifying moment as their throats are slit and they bleed to death in plain view of other frightened animals awaiting the same fate. Each person who goes vegan spares more than 100 animals every year daily suffering and a terrifying death.

For more information, please visit PETA.org.