Massive Billboard and More Than a Dozen Bus Ads Ruffle Feathers in U.S. Chicken Capital This Holiday Season
For Immediate Release:
December 6, 2016
Contact:
Megan Wiltsie 202-483-7382
Little Rock, Ark. – Just in time for the holidays, a fleet of PETA ads promoting kindness to chickens has gone up around Little Rock, Arkansas—the capital of one of the country’s top chicken meat–producing states.
The new campaign—which appears on 14 buses throughout the city and a billboard near the McDonald’s on I-30 between Frontage and Baseline roads—shows chickens next to the words “I am not a nugget or a drumstick. I am a living being—just like you” and “I’m ME, Not MEAT. See the Individual. Go Vegan.”
“Just like us, chickens are made of flesh and blood, feel pain and fear, and value their own lives,” says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. “PETA is encouraging people everywhere to show empathy and compassion for these little birds by choosing vegan meals during the holidays and every day.”
PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to eat”—notes that chickens killed for their flesh are crammed by the tens of thousands into filthy sheds and bred to grow such unnaturally large upper bodies that their legs often become crippled under the weight. At the slaughterhouse, their throats are often cut while they’re still conscious, and many are scalded to death in defeathering tanks.
The Little Rock ads are part of PETA’s new nationwide series in which animals speak out against the industries that abuse them. At the Mall of America, sheep take on the wool industry, while geese in Silicon Valley condemn the cruelty of down and foie gras. Cows in Texas put burgers and leather jackets on blast; pigs in Washington, D.C., urge diners to pass on pork; and lizards encourage shoppers in high-end Miami stores to steer clear of exotic-skin handbags.
For more information, please visit PETA.org.
