Chicken’s Plea to Kind Kids: ‘I’m ME, Not MEAT’

New PETA Billboards Encourage Students to Talk to Their Parents About Going Vegan

For Immediate Release:
September 20, 2018

Contact:
Audrey Shircliff 202-483-7382

Just in time for the start of the school year, PETA has placed three billboards near Roosevelt Elementary School that show a chicken’s face next to the words “I’m ME, Not MEAT. Kids: Ask Your Parents About Going Vegan.”

All three billboards are located on W. Villard Street between Second and Seventh avenues and will be in place for one month.

“Children naturally have empathy for animals, so they’d be horrified to learn that gentle birds are mutilated and killed for scrambled eggs and chicken nuggets,” says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. “PETA’s billboards aim to start the school year off with a family dialog about preventing immense animal suffering by going vegan.”

PETA 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. Whether “free-range” or “cage-free,” chickens used for eggs are kept in crowded, stressful conditions. On egg farms, workers cut off a portion of hens’ beaks with a burning-hot blade, and male chicks, who are considered worthless to the egg industry, are suffocated or thrown into high-speed grinders while they’re still alive.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to eat”—is also running the billboard in Alabama and Oklahoma.

PETA offers a free vegan starter kit full of recipes, tips, and more. For more information, please visit PETA.org.