Police Nab PETA Award for Saving Chicken From Fire

Bodycam Footage Shows Officer Whisking Bird Away From the Flames

For Immediate Release:
November 29, 2018

Contact:
Brooke Rossi 202-483-7382

A Compassionate Police Department Award is on its way from PETA to the Ossining Police Department, which responded to a shed fire at 2 a.m. on Saturday. As Officer Patrick McGovern searched for propane tanks on the property, he discovered a chicken just feet away from the flames. His bodycam footage shows him kindly reassuring the chicken as he gently catches her and carries her away from danger. She was returned to her family unharmed.

“Officer McGovern didn’t hesitate when he saw that this gentle chicken was in danger,” says PETA Vice President Colleen O’Brien. “PETA hopes this story will encourage everyone to see these birds as sensitive living beings who deserve as much compassion and care as dogs and cats do.”

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to eat or abuse in any other way”—notes that chickens have complex social structures and individual personalities and that their communication system includes more than 30 types of vocalizations. Although they feel pain and fear just as dogs, cats, and humans do, not a single federal law protects them from abuse—and most of the 9 billion chickens killed for food every year spend their entire lives in filthy sheds before they’re trucked to slaughterhouses where their throats are slit.

The Ossining Police Department will receive a framed certificate, a letter of congratulations, and a box of delicious vegan cookies.

For more information, please visit PETA.org.