JBS Slaughterhouse Closures Brings PETA Offer to Convert Buildings Into Empathy Museums

For Immediate Release:
June 25, 2026

Contact:
Sara Groves 202-483-7382

Following Greeley, Colorado-based JBS Foods USA’s June 12 announcement that it will close a slaughterhouse in Pennsylvania and a packing facility in Tennessee, laying off nearly 1,700 employees, PETA today sent a letter to JBS CEO Wesley Batista Filho with an interesting offer: Let PETA lease the two facilities and convert them into empathy museums where visitors can learn fascinating facts about the emotional lives of cows, pigs, and chickens who are treated as having no thoughts or feelings, killed for a fleeting taste. PETA points out its operation could create jobs for some of the displaced workers, give visitors an up-close look at the meat industry’s tools, such as bone saws, shackles, and captive bolt guns, and encourage them to choose a clean, cruelty-free vegan diet.

“Since these facilities opened, society has changed and we have learned who animals are and what they experience, including fear and pain, so the time to convert these awful places into educational exhibits is ripe,” says PETA Founder Ingrid Newkirk. “Any day is a good day to learn to be kind and put bloodshed, violence, and cruelty to animals out to pasture.”

JBS has a long and disturbing history of violating both federal slaughter regulations and workers’ rights, including numerous instances of workers shooting cows and pigs in the head multiple times with captive bolt guns before they were effectively stunned; a worker sawing into a cow’s neck while she was still conscious; and cows confined on transport trucks for up to 10 hours in all weather extremes before being unloaded, killing some of them. In 2023, after a Green Bay, Wisconsin slaughterhouse employee’s fingers were crushed on the job, a federal investigation found that JBS failed to protect workers from amputations by ignoring required safety standards. A 2022 federal investigation found that a cleaning company contracted by JBS illegally employed children as young as 13 to perform hazardous overnight tasks, such as operating skull splitters and meat-cutting saws. And in 2021, the U.S. Department of Labor cited JBS for repeated safety failures after an employee at a Greeley, Colorado facility was killed on the job.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to eat”—points out that when it comes to the ability to feel pain, hunger, and fear, a cow is a dog is a boy. PETA’s free vegan starter kits can help anyone thinking of making the switch. For more information, please visit PETA.org or follow PETA on X, Facebook, or Instagram.

PETA’s letter to Batista Filho follows.

June 24, 2026

Wesley Batista Filho, CEO

JBS Foods USA

Dear Mr. Batista Filho:

I’m writing on behalf of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals—PETA entities have more than 10.4 million members and supporters globally, including more than 109,000 in Colorado—in response to news that JBS will be shutting down a slaughterhouse in Souderton, Pennsylvania, and a packing facility in Memphis, Tennessee, and to express our interest in leasing these facilities to convert them into empathy museums. These new structures would not only boost tourism and create jobs for workers you have displaced but also remind visitors that cows should not be seen as burgers or steaks but as individuals deserving of respect. Please, allow me to elaborate.

Several investigations into JBS facilities have shown that animals endure horrific abuse at the hands of low-paid, overburdened workers who are subject to dangerous working conditions and serious labor violations, including child labor. In fact, most of the more than 29 million cows, nearly 130 million pigs, and more than 9 billion chickens killed in the U.S. annually for food spend their short lives crammed together on filthy factory farms, where they endure deeply stressful confinement and routine mutilations, all without any pain relief, before being sent on a terrifying journey to a slaughterhouse.

It’s easy to forget where meat comes from when you see it in packages at a supermarket, but as you well know, these animals don’t go peacefully. Our empathy museum would include displays highlighting fascinating, often conveniently overlooked facts about animals, such as that cows have best friends and like to play, pigs can master video games and are intelligent problem solvers, and chickens can do basic math and have a complex language system. Of course, all of them think, feel, and fear. To ensure that visitors can ponder the violence in the farmed-animal and slaughter industry, we’d also be interested in acquiring bone saws, meat grinders, captive-bolt guns, slicers, shackles, and other equipment used in it.

Our empathy museum would also include a café featuring vegan foods. At a time when the food industry is producing superior vegan options that are delicious and healthy and the demand for vegan meats is ever rising, there is no justification for continuing to reduce living beings to pieces of meat. Thank you for your consideration. Please get in touch about this idea.

Very truly yours,

Ingrid Newkirk

Founder