Slaughterhouse’s COVID-19 Closure Prompts PETA Protest

Fatal Viruses Are Linked to the Meat Industry, so JBS USA Is Urged to Sell Vegan Beef

For Immediate Release:
April 13, 2020

Contact:
Nicole Meyer 202-483-7382

To be safe and abide by Pennsylvania’s statewide shelter-in-place order, PETA supporters will drive up and down the street in a caravan of cars outside the Souderton JBS USA slaughterhouse, which is currently closed after several workers experienced flu-like symptoms, on Tuesday. The cars will be covered with signs and messages in window paint urging the company to shut down meat production permanently and start producing exclusively vegan meat—and to sweeten the deal, PETA also sent a letter to JBS USA’s CEO offering to help cover the cost of retraining its employees.

When:    Tuesday, April 14, 12 noon

Where:    Outside the slaughterhouse, 249 Allentown Rd., Souderton

“Filthy, blood- and offal-soaked slaughterhouses are perfect breeding grounds for deadly diseases that can jump from animals to humans—and they’re the least safe workplaces in the world,” says PETA President Ingrid Newkirk. “PETA suggests that JBS modernize, get ahead of the consumer curve, and reinvent itself as a producer of safe and 100% humane vegan meat.”

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to eat”—notes that deadly outbreaks of mad cow disease, swine flu, avian flu, SARS, HIV, hoof-and-mouth disease, and other zoonotic diseases have stemmed from capturing or farming animals for food. The novel coronavirus originated in a Chinese “wet market,” where live and dead animals were sold for human consumption.

PETA opposes speciesism, which is a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETA.org.