For Immediate Release:
April 4, 2023
Contact:
Moira Colley 202-483-7382
Newark, N.J. – Ahead of Easter in one of the U.S.’s top cities for celebrating the holiday, PETA is hitting the gas on a new messaging blitz on the sides of local buses, urging commuters to rethink why some animals sleep by their sides while others end up on their plates. The dogged appeal is designed to remind people that lambs and dogs are the same in all the ways that count—from feeling joy and pain to bonding with their loved ones—and asks everyone to embody the Easter tenet of mercy by enjoying a vegan holiday meal.
“We treasure dogs because they shower us with love and trust us to take care of them, something lambs would do, too, if given the chance,” says PETA President Ingrid Newkirk. “PETA’s message encourages everyone to leave animals off their plates on Easter and every day.”
With the abundance of delicious animal-free roasts available, celebrating Easter with kindness has never been easier. PETA LAMBS (“Least Among My Brothers and Sisters” from Matthew 25:40) has a vegan guide for the holiday, and PETA offers a free vegan starter kit.
This year, the U.S. meat industry has already killed millions of lambs for food. Raised on overcrowded, filthy feedlots, they endure painful mutilations within weeks of birth. Workers hole-punch their ears, cut off their tails, and castrate the males—all without pain relief. Slaughterhouse employees slash the young, vulnerable animals across the throat, often while they’re still conscious. Some try to escape this cruel fate, such as the seven sheep in Paterson who broke free from a slaughterhouse, won over hearts across the country, and wound up safe in a sanctuary.
PETA’s ads appear on 17 New Jersey transit buses. The group is also erecting a billboard to broadcast the message in Tampa, Florida, the country’s second-most dog-friendly city, near several lamb-selling shops and eateries.
PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to eat”—opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETA.org, listen to The PETA Podcast, or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.
