Update: ‘I’m ME, Not MEAT’ Billboard Now Up in Honor of Cows Killed in Truck Crash

PETA Memorial Encourages People to Keep Animals Out of Transport Vehicles by Going Vegan

For Immediate Release:
April 3, 2019

Contact:
Audrey Shircliff 202-483-7382

In honor of the cows who were injured and killed when a truck carrying them overturned on Midway Road between Highway 113 and Pedrick Road in Dixon on March 4, PETA has placed a billboard near the crash site showing a cow’s face next to the words “I’m ME, Not MEAT. See the Individual. Go Vegan.“

The billboard is located on I-80, just south of the Midway Road exit.

“If this message of compassion inspires just one person to go vegan, these gentle cows won’t have died in vain,” says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. “PETA’s billboard pays tribute to their brief lives and encourages people to help prevent future suffering by keeping cows and all other animals off their plates.”

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to eat”—opposes speciesism, which is a supremacist worldview. Before cows are loaded onto trucks for long journeys to the slaughterhouse in all weather extremes, they’re often confined to cramped, filthy feedlots without protection from the elements. Calves are torn away from their mothers within hours of birth and are castrated and branded without pain relief. At the slaughterhouse, workers shoot cows in the head with a captive-bolt gun, hang them up by one leg, and cut their throat—often while they’re still conscious and able to feel pain.

In 2018 alone, there were more than 90 accidents in the U.S. involving trucks used to transport chickens, pigs, turkeys, and cows. So far in 2019, PETA has already noted more than two dozen accidents involving vehicles transporting animals used for food.

PETA offers free vegan starter kits, available here, full of recipes, tips, and more. For more information, please visit PETA.org.