Chickens are friends for some people, dinner for others. Sometimes both.
The animal rights activist group feels that the name of a rural road in the Treasure Valley isn’t kind to poultry.
PETA sent out a news release Wednesday morning, alerting Idaho media that they have written a letter to Caldwell Mayor Garret Nancolas to ask for a change to the street name Chicken Dinner Road.
“Just like dogs, cats, and human beings, chickens feel pain and fear and value their own lives,” said PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman, in the letter.
She wants the mayor to change the name of the road to “one that celebrates chickens as individuals, not as beings to kill, chop up, and label as ‘dinner.’ “
In the letter, dated July 3, Reiman said she’s not trying to “ruffle any feathers,” adding that words matter and “have the power to change lives.”
The way the meat industry treats chickens is inhumane, she said, because they are “confined to crowded, filthy sheds with tens of thousands of other birds, where disease, smothering, and heart attacks are common.”
It doesn’t get any better from there, she said in her letter.
“Then they are violently crammed onto transport trucks for shipment to the slaughterhouse, where they’re shackled and hung upside down, their throats are cut, and they’re immersed in scalding-hot feather removal tanks — often while they’re still conscious,” Reiman wrote.
Changing the name of Chicken Dinner Road would show compassion to chickens and respect for other species, she said. She said PETA would help pay for replacing the sign.
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