Oh, the humanity poultry! Last month, a tractor trailer carrying an indeterminate number of live chickens overturned on a highway outside Athens, Ga. According to reports at the time, there were no injuries — meaning human injuries. All the chickens perished.
To underscore that their deaths were not in vain, the watchdog group, PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals), has asked the Georgia Department of Transportation to erect a 10-foot-high roadside memorial.
No, you have not logged on to The Onion; the story is for real, reported by NBC affiliate 11 Alive. The station interviewed PETA spokeswoman Sarah Segal. “They are living creatures, so they do feel pain, just like we do,” said Segal, author of the petition.
In a news release, PETA associate director of campaigns Lindsay Rajt wrote:
Chickens suffer from the time they’re babies, when they have their sensitive beaks cut off with a searing-hot blade. Our proposed statue would bring this suffering to the public’s attention and would encourage people to stop eating chickens. At the very least, it would remind motorists to be more alert and help prevent future terrifying crashes.
But GDOT director of administration Meg Pirkle said no dice to the memorial. Memorials on highways and interstates are strictly regulated, she went on to explain. In any case, when memorials are erected, they are generally 15-inch discs, not 10-foot gravestones.
Also, the agency added, the program is restricted to people. That is perhaps the unkindest cut of all.
Elsewhere in PETA news…
A rare PETA two-fer. Yahoo News reports that PETA has apologized for disseminating graphic material to elementary school students that depicts animal cruelty.
Calabash Elementary, a charter school in Woodland Hills, California was holding a special school event where a live baby cow was being brought to the campus to teach students about dairy farming. The lesson plan did not sit well with one parent of a fifth-grader at the school. Also an animal rights activist, the parent organized a protest, which brought four PETA volunteers to the campus to hand out reading material. The intent was to have two separate types of literature, one given to the children and another given to their parents. However within what appeared to be the children’s innocent looking comic book entitled, “A Cow’s Life,” was a pamphlet with graphic images of animal cruelty.
Reportedly the images, meant for adult eyes only, included chained and sore ridden cows covered in fecal matter, bulls being de-horned, and an infected udder on a dairy cow. The pamphlets were handed out to elementary school children including one as young as three-years-old.
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