‘If You Wouldn’t Eat Your Dog, Why Eat a Pig?’ Asks Holiday Billboard Blitz

PETA Challenges Pup-Friendly Portland to Practice Kindness to Pigs, Too

For Immediate Release:
December 19, 2016

Contact:
Brooke Rossi 202-483-7382

Just in time for the holidays, PETA has plastered Portland with billboards that show a family dog’s collar resting on a plate slathered with gravy next to the words “If You Wouldn’t Eat Your Dog, Why Eat a Pig? Go Vegan.” Portland is one of the most dog-friendly cities in the country, with the highest number of dog parks per capita, a high density of veterinarians, and a recently passed ban on the retail sale of dogs and cats—and PETA is challenging residents to extend that same compassion to animals who are killed for food.

The billboards have gone up on top of the Virginia Woof Dog Daycare (1520 W. Burnside St.), facing the West Hills Animal Clinic (4325 S.W. Beaverton Hillsdale Hwy.), and six other locations around the city.

“Pigs are just as loving, intelligent, and sensitive as the dogs and cats who share our homes,” says PETA President Ingrid Newkirk. “PETA’s billboards call on people to extend the holiday spirit of giving to all animals by choosing delicious, cruelty-free vegan meals.”

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to eat”—notes that in the industrialized 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 painkillers. At slaughterhouses, they’re hung upside down and bled to death, often while still conscious.

For more information and free vegan holiday recipes, please visit PETA.org.