People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) is pushing to have a stone memorial erected at the site where a truck transporting chickens crashed and an unknown number of those chickens died.
AOL News reported that the wreck happened on Highway 99 in California’s Stanislaus County on August 5. Several people interviewed think the group is well-intentioned in its effort to memorialize the chickens, but others shared that they thought the idea was absurd.
PETA shows its insensitive side
To me, the thought of putting up a roadside stone monument to memorialize chickens is more than absurd. It’s downright insensitive and offensive, and I would hope that most people who have lost someone they cared about in an automobile accident agree.
Just Friday night, a friend of mine was killed in a car accident. She was a very dear person with whom I worked alongside for many hours as we volunteered for projects that benefitted our community. As a clerk at a local store, she always seemed to go out of her way to be friendly to customers, but really, she put in no effort to be friendly at all. That was just who she was.
Also, decades ago, my aunt, uncle and young cousin were killed in an automobile accident. Not that I have sought to get one in place, but to my knowledge, there remains no roadside memorial in the place where they lost their lives. Shouldn’t their memory be kept alive before the memory of a flock of chickens?
It would appear that PETA is trying to make the lives of chickens on par with or even above human lives, rather than subscribe to the belief that man is to have dominion over animals.
Dual-purpose claims
PETA spokespeople have said the purpose of the proposed memorial is two-fold. They claim it would:
- Remind truckers of their responsibility to drive safely
- Encourage more people to adopt a vegan diet
While I would never accuse PETA of caring nothing about traffic safety, it would be interesting to see the organization’s response if it were suggested to instead use half of its financial resources budgeted for this memorial to place billboards or public service announcements encouraging safe highway travel and the other half for ads promoting its vegan agenda.
Do you think that would fly? Or are pigs sooner to fly?
