PETA Fires Back, Saying That Officials Are Illegally Trampling Group's Right to Free Speech
For
Immediate Release:
August
16, 2012
Contact:
Sophia
Charchuk 202-483-7382
Hutchinson, Kan. -- PETA has fired off a letter demanding that the Kansas State Fair reverse its decision to require PETA to shield gruesome video footage of factory farms narrated by Paul McCartney from visitors at its booth. In the letter, PETA claims that fair officials in the nation's second-largest beef state have violated the group's right of free speech in a government-sanctioned public forum by censoring the content of the booth. The booth recently made headlines in Iowa when officials temporarily booted it because of profanity used by violent farm workers in the footage. In a thought-provoking twist on the traditional 4-H booth's promotion of the meat industry, which sharply contrasts with the organization's otherwise positive mission, PETA's four H's stand for "Hell for animals," "Hazardous to the environment," "Heart attack–inducing," and "Hypocritical for teaching kids to care about only certain animals and to disrespect others."
"Meat comes from intelligent, feeling animals who suffer every day of their lives on factory farms and experience a painful and terrifying death at slaughterhouses," says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. "People who eat meat deserve to know the truth. The truth isn't always pleasant, but you don't get around it by denying people their constitutional rights."
On today's factory farms, animals are crammed by the thousands into filthy, windowless sheds and confined to wire cages, gestation crates, barren dirt lots, and other cruel confinement systems. Chickens and turkeys have their throats cut while they're still conscious, piglets have their tails and testicles cut off without being given any painkillers, fish are suffocated or cut open while they're still alive on the decks of fishing boats, and calves are torn away from their mothers within hours of birth—causing severe trauma to both mothers and calves.
For more information, please visit PETA.org.