Billboard to Pay Tribute to Turkeys Killed in Truck Crash

After Second Foster Farms Truck Crash This Summer, PETA Encourages Everyone to Help Keep Animals off the Road by Going Vegan

For Immediate Release:
August 28, 2018

Contact:
Audrey Shircliff 202-483-7382

In honor of the turkeys who died in Merced on August 21 after a Foster Farms truck overturned, PETA plans to place a billboard by the crash site on Highway 99, south of E. Mission Avenue, showing a turkey’s face next to the words “I’m ME, Not MEAT. See the Individual. Go Vegan.“

This was the second Foster Farms truck accident this summer: One of the company’s chicken trucks overturned in Clark County, Washington, on June 25. This year alone, PETA has made note of more than 50 crashes involving animal transport trucks in the U.S.—and those are just the reported accidents.

“Yet another Foster Farms truck crash has left countless birds dead or mangled, and any survivors were presumably shipped off to the slaughterhouse,” says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. “PETA’s billboard would remind everyone that the single best way to prevent these horrific accidents is to keep turkeys off the road in the first place by going vegan.”

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to eat”—notes that in nature, turkeys are loving parents and spirited explorers who can live up to 10 years, but those raised for food are normally loaded onto transport trucks to be taken for slaughter when they’re between 12 and 26 weeks old. The birds are hung by their feet from metal shackles and dragged through an electrified bath, and they’re often still conscious when their throats are slit and they’re dumped into scalding-hot water to remove their feathers.

For more information, please visit PETA.org.