‘I’m Me, Not Meat’ Billboard Aims to Honor Cows Killed in Truck Crash

PETA Memorial Will Encourage People to Help Keep Animals out of Transport Vehicles by Going Vegan

For Immediate Release:
July 15, 2019

Contact:
Brooke Rossi 202-483-7382

In honor of the 37 cows who were killed when a truck carrying them overturned on County Road 833 in Hendry County on Wednesday, PETA plans to place a billboard near the crash site showing a cow’s face next to the words “I’m ME, Not MEAT. See the Individual. Go Vegan.“

“More than three dozen cows died when this truck overturned, and any who survived will presumably end up under the slaughterhouse knife,” says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. “PETA’s billboard will remind people that the best way to prevent tragedies like this one is to help keep cows off the road in the first place by going vegan.”

Before cows are loaded onto trucks for long journeys to the slaughterhouse, they’re often confined to cramped, filthy feedlots without protection from the elements. Calves are torn away from their mothers within hours of birth and are castrated and branded without pain relief. At the slaughterhouse, workers shoot cows in the head with a captive-bolt gun, hang them up by one leg, and cut their throat—often while they’re still conscious and able to feel pain.

In 2018 alone, there were more than 90 accidents in the U.S. involving trucks used to transport chickens, pigs, turkeys, and cows. So far in 2019, PETA has already noted 56 accidents involving vehicles transporting animals used for food.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to eat”—opposes speciesism, which is a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETA.org.