People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals sent the above image to The Pitch today. The sign is a memorial for the 30 cows killed when a transport truck crashed through a guardrail on Interstate 70, careened down an embankment and landed on 118th Street in Kansas City, Kansas, on April 26. The cattle were en route to slaughter.
PETA is asking the Kansas Department of Transportation to put up the memorial sign at the crash scene. The animal-rights organization says the sign reminds truck "drivers of their responsibility to the thousands of animals they haul to their deaths every day."
"It's tragic enough that cows will end up in slaughterhouses, where their throats will be slit and some of them will be skinned alive," PETA Vice President Dan Mathews said in a statement. "PETA's sign will remind truck drivers that the least that we can do for these animals is to take care to save them from plunging off of an overpass to a bloody, drawn-out death on the pavement below."
I left a message with the Kansas DOT. I'll update when I hear back.
UPDATE: "We don't post fatality signs for anyone - animal or human," says Steve Swartz, KDOT's public information officer.
Swartz says individuals can put up roadside memorials (and the state has a few guidelines), but the state doesn't put up memorial signs.
"The state doesn't have any such program to mark the spot of a fatality," Swartz says.
The closest thing: Highways can be adopted, but adopters have to clean their highways.
______________________________________________________________________________________________
Follow us on Twitter and like us on Facebook. Follow Justin Kendall @justindkendall.
Showing 1-10 of 10
