Photos: Turkey Makes Vegan Plea on Thanksgiving Billboard

For Immediate Release:
November 13, 2018

Contact:
David Perle 202-483-7382

Just in time for Thanksgiving, a giant billboard—showing an inquisitive-looking turkey alongside the words “I’m ME, Not MEAT. See the Individual. Go Vegan”—has just gone up on the top of PETA’s Bob Barker Building in Los Angeles.

The billboard is part of a nationwide blitz of similar ads in airports and busy holiday travel destinations, including in North Canton, Ohio; Rapid City, South Dakota; Denver; Minneapolis; Boston; Las Vegas; Houston; and Fort Myers, Florida.

“These ads will inspire people to consider who the turkeys killed for Thanksgiving meals really are—and that’s frightened young animals who didn’t want to die,” says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. “PETA is encouraging families to make animal-friendly vegan stews, roasts, and casseroles or enjoy timesavers like Field Roast’s Hazelnut Cranberry Roast en Croûte.”

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to eat”—notes at least 44 million turkeys are killed in the U.S. each year for Thanksgiving. In nature, turkeys are protective and loving parents as well as spirited explorers who can climb trees and run as fast as 25 mph. On today’s farms, the birds are confined to cramped, filthy warehouses, and their upper beaks and parts of their toes are cut off, all without painkillers. They’re only 5 months old, on average, when they’re shipped to the slaughterhouse, where they’re hung upside down and their throats are slit before they’re dumped into scalding-hot water to remove their feathers, often while still conscious.

PETA offers a full library of delicious, easy-to-make vegan holiday recipes here.

For more information, please visit PETA.org.