On the 19th of December 2024, the launch of Taco Bell’s new chicken nugget sales, PETA supporters led by PETA’s “I’m Not a Nugget” chick mascot arrived at Taco Bell’s Hollywood Boulevard store to hand out 1,000 vegan nuggets and sway hungry customers to leave chickens in peace. This event took place following news that California’s Gov. Gavin Newsom declared a state of emergency due to bird flu.
Ingrid Newkirk, PETA President, said, “Read the room, Taco Bell: With bird flu cases soaring, the last thing the world needs is more chicken parts on fast-food menus. Disease runs rampant in filthy poultry sheds, and PETA urges everyone to choose compassionate vegan meals so that we can all live más.”
In a press release announcing the event, PETA wrote, “Chickens form complex social structures, dream when they sleep, and worry about the future, just as humans do—yet more chickens are raised and killed for food than all other land animals combined. In the meat industry, chickens are confined by the tens of thousands to severely crowded, filthy sheds, where viruses mutate and spread, before being trucked to slaughterhouses, where workers cut their throats — often while they’re still conscious — and scald many to death in defeathering tanks. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warns that three out of every four new or emerging infectious diseases in humans come from animals.”
In May 2024, The World Health Organization (WHO) raised concerns about the spread of the H5N1 bird flu variant that has an “extraordinarily high” mortality rate in humans. The deaths of tens of millions of farmed birds, and many wild birds, as a result of an outbreak that began in 2020 was thought to be the extent of the pandemic, but the spread of the virus within several mammal species, including cows and goats, has increased the risk of causing a human epidemic (or even worse, a pandemic).
Join millions choosing vegan in 2025 with Veganuary! https://bit.ly/Veganuary25
