Spotted in Dublin: Covid-19 Outbreaks Prompt ‘Close Meat Factories’ Billboard

For Immediate Release:

27 May 2020

Contact:

Jennifer White +44 (0) 20 7837 6327; [email protected]

SPOTTED IN DUBLIN: COVID-19 OUTBREAKS PROMPT ‘CLOSE MEAT FACTORIES’ MOBILE BILLBOARD

No One Needs Meat, Says PETA

Dublin – “Close abattoirs and meat factories: save the workers, their families, and the animals.” That’s the urgent message on a new mobile PETA billboard circling Dublin today.

Images are available here, here, and here.

The campaign follows reports that because of their frigid temperatures and cramped conditions, meat-processing plants in Ireland – as well as in the US – have become COVID-19 hotspots. Outbreaks have been reported at 16 Irish plants, with over 800 workers infected with the virus so far. At Rosderra Irish Meats plant in Tipperary one-third of the workers have tested positive for COVID-19, yet the facility remains open – meaning animals continue to be killed, while workers continue to be be put at risk.

“A deadly disease that originated in a meat market is now sweeping through blood-soaked, offal-strewn meat-processing plants and endangering workers, their families, and the whole community”, says PETA Director Elisa Allen. “No one needs meat – that’s why PETA is calling for these filthy facilities to be shut down immediately, for everyone’s protection.

The novel coronavirus originated in a Chinese “wet market,” where live and dead animals are sold for human consumption; swine flu began on a factory farm; and other influenza viruses have been traced to chickens. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warns that approximately 75% of recently emerged infectious diseases affecting humans originated in other animals.

Researchers at the University of Oxford confirm that eating vegan is the single best way to help save the planet, and the United Nations has described meat production as “the world’s most urgent problem”.

PETA – whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to eat” and which opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview – offers a free vegan starter kit on its website for anyone wanting to kick the meat habit today.

For more information, please visit PETA.org.uk.

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