PETA is bringing its message of empathy for animals and veganism to Bangor on Saturday.
PETA, also known as People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, will be driving a replica chicken transportation truck, known as “Hell on Wheels,” around Bangor. It is emblazoned with images of chickens crammed into cages on their way to slaughter.
The truck will be playing the sounds of distressed birds and every 10 seconds a subliminal message suggesting people become vegan.
The truck will set up outside Pepino’s Mexican Restaurant on Park Street at noon and will appear at other Bangor eateries that serve chicken as well.
“Behind every chicken burrito is a once-living, sensitive individual who was crammed onto a truck for a terrifying, miserable journey to their death,” PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman said in a statement. “PETA’s ‘Hell on Wheels’ truck is an appeal to anyone who eats chicken or eggs to remember that these industries are cruel to birds and hazardous to human health and that the only kind meal is a vegan one.”
PETA cited cruelty in the meat industry, as well as the spread of diseases like bird flu, which has killed more than 37 million chickens in the United States so far this year and infected more than 1,000 herds of cows and dozens of people, one of whom died in January, over the past year.
It’s not PETA’s first appearance in Maine. It has protested at the Maine Lobster Festival in Rockland, bought ad space at the Portland International Jetport in 2018 to promote veganism and proposed replacing Portland’s Maine Lobsterman statue with a lobster with a defiantly raised claw crushing a trap in 2022.
