Slaughterhouse’s COVID-19 Closure Prompts PETA Protest

With Fatal Viruses Linked to the Meat Industry, Tyson Will Be Urged to Sell Vegan Pork

For Immediate Release:
April 8, 2020

Contact:
Brooke Rossi 202-483-7382

Brandishing signs proclaiming, “Tyson: Stay Closed for Everyone’s Sake,” and “Retrain the Workers: Make Plant-Based Pork,” PETA representatives will be in downtown Columbus Junction—just a mile away from the Tyson pig slaughterhouse, which was shuttered after more than two dozen of its employees tested positive for COVID-19—to call on the company to retrain its workers to make vegan pork instead. The top two dairies in the U.S. have declared bankruptcy because of falling demand, and PETA believes that Tyson shouldn’t wait to change its business model.

When:    Thursday, April 9, 12 noon

Where:    At the intersection of Main and Walnut streets, Columbus Junction

“By providing breeding grounds for swine flu, SARS, avian flu, and other diseases, filthy slaughterhouses and meat markets threaten the health of every human being on the planet,” says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. “PETA suggests that Tyson stay closed unless it can reinvent itself as a producer of healthy and 100% humane vegan pork.”

Swine flu began on a U.S. factory farm, and the novel coronavirus originated in a Chinese “wet market,” where live and dead animals were sold for human consumption. Health authorities confirm that influenza viruses and coronaviruses are zoonotic (transmissible from other animals to humans). Previous influenza viruses originated in pigs and chickens. Vegan pork is already produced by Simple Truth, Tofurky, Beyond Meat, and other brands and is becoming more and more popular as people turn to a vegan diet because of health, environmental, and animal welfare concerns.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to eat”—opposes speciesism, which is a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETA.org.