Vegan News
PETA billboard targets Dallas' rather puny seafood restaurant scene
PETA, aka People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, has gifted Dallas with a new billboard erected in the thick of the Central Business District.
The animal advocacy organization bought a prominently placed billboard in downtown Dallas near the intersection of Pearl Street and Pacific Avenue, as part of a campaign to promote a vegan diet.
The ad shows a fish swimming underwater next to the words "I'm ME, Not MEAT. See the Individual. Go Vegan."
According to a release, the ad is designed to inform people that it's not just cows who suffer in "cattle country," IE Dallas, Texas.
PETA's rationale for the location of the ad is that it is near Dallas Fish Market, Top's Seafood and Burger, Rex's Seafood and Market, and St. Pete's Dancing Marlin.
Applause to PETA for finding a location in Dallas that has four actual seafood restaurants in a 2-mile radius. That had to have been a challenge. Steakhouses, we have; seafood, not so much.
This billboard campaign has been deployed in only one other city in the U.S.: Nashua, New Hampshire, an idyllic burg 46 miles northeast of Boston. An ad targeting seafood eaters seems to make more sense in New England where there is way more seafood consumption than Dallas or Texas.
But PETA is targeting Texas because it's the No. 4 catfish-producing state in the country.
The group says that commercially farmed fish live in cramped, filthy enclosures and suffer from parasite infections, diseases, debilitating injuries, and severe depression.
Wild-caught fish don't have it any better: They suffocate slowly, are crushed to death, or get their throats and stomachs cut open while they're alive.
More fish are killed for food each year than all other animals combined.
PETA VP Tracy Reiman says in a statement that "PETA hopes this ad will inspire people to show fish some goodwill by choosing hearty and delicious vegan meals."
"Just like humans, fish feel pain and fear and value their own lives — and they deserve our compassion," she says.
The billboard will remain up until mid-December.
PETA seems to favor Texas. In August, PETA included the city of Mesquite as part of a limited national campaign in which advertising kiosks were installed at malls in key cities across the U.S., encouraging consumers to ditch fur and other animal skins.
