Truck Accident Prompts PETA Memorial to Pigs

For Immediate Release:
September 29, 2023

Contact:
Brittney Williams 202-483-7382

To memorialize the dozens of pigs struck by cars and killed along the Mississippi River Bridge last Tuesday after the animals fell from an open gate on the back of a transport truck, PETA plans to place a sky-high message near the site of their deaths proclaiming, “See the Individual. Go Vegan.”

“Pigs died in agony and terror after their bodies hit the pavement and cars slammed into them, and traumatized survivors were put back onto the truck and sent to slaughter,” says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. “PETA encourages anyone disturbed by the thought of animals dying under a car to extend that sympathy to the pigs who die under the slaughterhouse knife and go vegan.”

In today’s meat industry, mother pigs are squeezed into narrow metal stalls barely larger than their bodies and kept almost constantly pregnant or nursing. Pigs’ tails are chopped off, their teeth are cut with pliers, and males are castrated—all without any pain relief. At the slaughterhouse, they’re hung upside down—often while still conscious—and bled to death. Every person who goes vegan spares the lives of nearly 200 animals each year.

PETA notes that there have been at least 45 accidents involving trucks carrying animals used for food so far this year and that there were at least 89 last year.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to eat”—opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETA.org, listen to The PETA Podcast, or follow the group on X (formerly Twitter), Facebook, or Instagram.