Hey, Diners, ‘I Am You, Only Different,’ Proclaims PETA Ad Blitz

Placed Outside Busy Restaurants, PETA’s Provocative Bus Shelter Ads Plead With Diners to See Cows as Individuals and Go Vegan

For Immediate Release:
July 31, 2017

Contact:
Megan Wiltsie 202-483-7382

PETA is serving up some food for thought to hungry diners, courtesy of bus shelter ads promoting the idea that animals are much more than the sum of their parts. The ads have gone up outside busy restaurants in Westchester County.

The ads—which are posted outside McDonald’s, PF Chang’s, and Wendy’s locations—feature a herd of cows alongside the message “I Am You, Only Different. Go Vegan.”

“Just like humans, cows are made of flesh and blood, feel pain and fear, have unique personalities, and value their own lives,” says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. “PETA’s new ad campaign encourages everyone to empathize with animals by choosing vegan meals.”

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to eat”—notes that intelligent, curious cows in the meat industry spend their short lives on cramped, filthy feedlots. Calves are torn away from their mothers within hours of birth and are castrated and branded without painkillers. Long before they reach their natural life expectancy, they’re trucked through all weather extremes to slaughterhouses, where workers shoot them in the head with a captive-bolt gun, hang them up by one leg, and cut their throats—often while they’re still conscious.

The ads can be seen in the following locations:

• Outside the McDonald’s at 148 U.S. 9 in Yonkers
• Outside the Wendy’s at 1751 Central Park Ave. in Yonkers
• Outside the Wendy’s at 53 New Saw Mill River Rd. in Hawthorne
• In front of the PF Chang’s at 55 Westchester Ave. in White Plains

The group plans to target New York City commuters with similar ads in New Jersey and on Long Island. PETA tried to post another ad showing a crying baby cow alongside the words “I Am You, Only Different. Go Vegan,” but the Westchester County Department of Transportation rejected the image.

For more information, please visit PETA.org.