‘Time to Move Away From Meat’ Full-Page Ad Blitz in D.C. to Hit the ‘Examiner’

With Even More COVID-19 Deaths Reported in the District, PETA Will Appeal to Residents to Keep Animals off Their Plates

For Immediate Release:
May 11, 2020

Contact:
Megan Wiltsie 202-483-7382

Following Mayor Muriel Bowser’s announcement that D.C. has more than 6,000 confirmed cases of and over 300 deaths from COVID-19, PETA will urge residents and lawmakers to help stop future pandemics by running an ad in Tuesday’s edition of the Washington Examiner that shows a dying piglet with the words “America: It’s Time to Move Away From Meat.”

The new ad follows similar appeals in editions of The Hill (May 6) and The Washington Post (May 4). PETA is challenging President Donald Trump’s backing for slaughterhouses to remain open—even as workers suffer from COVID-19—and pointing out that blood- and offal-soaked factory farms and slaughterhouses in the U.S. are every bit as filthy as China’s “wet markets,” all of them breeding grounds for disease. Swine flu, bird flu, SARS, and now COVID-19 have all been linked to eating animals.

“A meat shortage isn’t a food shortage,” the ad stresses. “No one needs meat. It is linked to heart disease, cancer, strokes, high blood pressure, diabetes, and obesity. Eat as if everyone’s life depends on it, because it does.”

“So many people feel powerless in the face of this health crisis, but everyone still has control over what, or who, is on their plate,” says PETA President Ingrid Newkirk. “PETA stands ready with all the resources needed to help Americans stay healthy and help prevent future pandemics by going vegan.”

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to eat” and which opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview—ran similar ads in Sunday editions of The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, The San Diego Union-Tribune, and The Seattle Times.

Resources on PETA’s website include vegan starter kits and a list of vegan-friendly restaurant chains, many of which are still offering takeout during the pandemic. For more information, please visit PETA.org.