Photos: Turkey or Tabby for Christmas Dinner? New PETA Ad Blitz Says There’s No Difference
York – If you wouldn’t eat your cat for Christmas dinner, why would you eat a turkey? PETA’s new billboards are serving up this food for thought in York, which has been named the UK’s “most festive city”, urging locals to consider why some animals share their homes while others end up on their plates.
The ads, located near the city’s famous Christmas market and beyond, tell passersby that cats and turkeys are the same in all the ways that count – from feeling joy and pain to bonding with their loved ones – and ask everyone to embody the spirit of kindness by enjoying a vegan Christmas meal.
High-resolution images are also available here. Credit: Atken Photography
PETA’s new Christmas advert, which encourages viewers to kill the tradition, not the turkey, by trying a vegan meal instead, has also launched at various Cineworld, Vue, and City Screen branches in York and will be shown throughout the festive season.
“Turkeys are smart, social birds, who don’t want to be trussed and stuffed any more than we do,” says PETA Vice President of Programmes Elisa Allen. “PETA urges the people of York to bring comfort and joy to all species this year by leaving animals off their plates.”
In nature, turkeys spend their days caring for their young, building nests, foraging for food, taking dust baths, and roosting high in trees. Free-roaming turkeys can live up to 10 years, but those raised for food are normally slaughtered when they’re between 12 and 26 weeks old. In the UK, approximately 9 million turkeys are killed each year for Christmas alone. Workers hang the young birds upside down, drag them through an electrified bath, slit their throats, and dump them into scalding-hot water in defeathering tanks – often while they’re still conscious.
In addition to sparing the lives of nearly 200 animals a year, everyone who goes vegan slashes their carbon footprint and reduces their risk of suffering from heart disease, diabetes, cancer, and other ailments. PETA offers a guide to meatless Christmas roasts and free vegan starter kits for those ready to make the switch.
PETA – whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to eat” – opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETA.org.uk or follow the group on Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), TikTok, or Instagram.
Contact:
Lucy Watson +44 (0) 20 7837 6327; [email protected]
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