Meat Stinks! Boyle Heights Warehouse Stench Brings PETA Appeal to Stop Eating Animals

For Immediate Release:
August 11, 2026

Contact:
Nicole Perreira 202-483-7382

Following reports that Boyle Heights residents are fuming over foul odors after a June fire at a cold-storage warehouse left millions of pounds of meat rotting inside, PETA plans to place a billboard in the area, reminding everyone that, whether it’s rotting in a warehouse or in someone’s digestive tract, meat stinks.

The foul odor has prompted thousands of complaints, and some residents report feeling physically ill as sour, garbage-like odors hang over the neighborhood. As PETA points out, it is a reeking reminder that all meat is the decomposing corpse of an animal who felt pain and fear and didn’t want to die.

“The stench of death emanating from this facility is enough to make anyone lose their lunch, but nothing is more stomach-churning than the nightmare live animals experience at the slaughterhouse,” says PETA Founder Ingrid Newkirk, a vegan for over 50 years. “PETA urges anyone disgusted by this smell of slaughter to help end the suffering by going vegan.”

PETA points out that pigs are soothed by music, and cows mourn when a loved one dies or when they’re separated from each other. Yet in the meat industry, they’re crammed into filthy sheds or kept on crowded feedlots and subjected to tail docking, castration, and other mutilations with no pain relief. Eventually, they’re forced onto transport trucks for a terrifying journey to a slaughterhouse, where workers slit their throats—often while they’re still conscious.

Each person who goes vegan spares nearly 200 animals every year, dramatically shrinks their food-related carbon footprint, and slashes their risk of suffering from cancer, heart disease, strokes, diabetes, and obesity. PETA’s free vegan starter kit is filled with tips to help anyone looking to make the switch.

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 thirst, a cow is a dog is a boy. For more information, please visit PETA.org or follow PETA on X, Facebook, or Instagram.