Turkey Makes Vegan Plea to Holiday Travelers

New PETA Billboard Urges Everyone to Opt for Animal-Free Feasts

For Immediate Release:
November 16, 2018

Contact:
David Perle 202-483-7382

Just in time for the holiday travel season, PETA has placed a billboard in Boston that shows a turkey’s appealing face alongside the words “You Can Live Without That Turkey Leg. I Can’t. Go Vegan This Holiday.”

The billboard—which is on the Southeast Expressway, facing south, just before the entrance to the Ted Williams Tunnel to Logan Airport and the Massachusetts Turnpike—will remain in place through Thanksgiving and some of the busiest travel days of the year.

“This billboard will inspire people to consider who the turkeys killed for Thanksgiving meals really are—frightened young animals who didn’t want to die,” says PETA President Ingrid Newkirk. “PETA is encouraging everyone to enjoy animal-friendly vegan stews, roasts, and casseroles or time-savers like Field Roast’s Hazelnut Cranberry Roast en Croute.”

At least 44 million turkeys are killed in the U.S. each year for Thanksgiving. In nature, turkeys are protective and loving parents as well as spirited explorers who can climb trees and run as fast as 25 mph. On today’s farms, the birds are confined to cramped, filthy warehouses, and their upper beaks and parts of their toes are cut off, all without painkillers. They’re only 5 months old, on average, when they’re shipped to the slaughterhouse, where they’re hung upside down and their throats are slit before they’re dumped into scalding-hot water to remove their feathers, often while still conscious.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to eat”—has placed similar ads in cities across the U.S. leading up to Thanksgiving, including inside airports in Rapid City, South Dakota, and Akron, Ohio, and on billboards in Denver, Minneapolis, Las Vegas, Houston, and Fort Myers, Florida.

For more information, including free vegan recipes and a free vegan starter kit, please visit PETA.org.