Group's Sign Would Caution Drivers to Prevent Animal Suffering and Death en Route to the Slaughterhouse
For Immediate Release:
May 31, 2012
Contact:
Shakira Croce 202-483-7382
Kansas City, Mo. — In the wake of an April 26 incident in which a truck transporting cows to slaughter careened off a Kansas City overpass, causing the painful deaths of at least 30 cows, a local PETA member has sent a letter on the group's behalf to the Kansas Department of Transportation to ask for a sign at the site of the accident that would read, "In Memory of 30 Cows Who Suffered and Died at This Spot." As PETA explains in its letter, the memorial sign would remind tractor-trailer drivers of their responsibility to the thousands of animals they haul to their deaths every day.
"It's tragic enough that cows will end up in slaughterhouses, where their throats will be cut and some of them will be skinned alive," says PETA Vice President Dan Mathews. "PETA's sign will remind truck drivers that the least that we can do for these animals is to take care to save them from plunging off an overpass to a bloody, drawn-out death on the pavement below."
Before they are ever loaded onto trucks bound for slaughterhouses, cows raised on factory farms suffer immensely: Calves are taken away from their mothers within hours of birth, and they are castrated and branded without any painkillers. These sensitive, curious animals spend their short lives on massive, filthy feedlots, where they are exposed to the elements. At the slaughterhouse, cows are shot in the head with a captive-bolt gun, are hung up by one leg, and have their throats cut. The animals are then skinned—and some remain conscious through the entire process.
For more information, please visit PETA.org or click here.