WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. (AP) - An advertising company says it likely won’t accept a request from an animal rights group to erect a billboard memorializing 21 cows killed in a tractor-trailer crash in North Carolina.
Lamar Advertising Co. of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, received a request from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals to place the billboard, but the company says it doesn’t accept advertising from the advocacy group, spokeswoman Allie McAlpin told the Winston-Salem Journal Tuesday.
PETA’s vice president responded that the company ended a “long relationship” with the group over complaints about a billboard calling for the release of an orca at SeaWorld, according to a statement obtained by news outlets.
Lamar Advertising’s director of investor relations told The Advocate in 2017 that the company’s decision wasn’t based on the SeaWold billboard, but violations of its policy against using “provocative and critical copy to create negative impressions of other entities.”
PETA said in a statement Monday that it was seeking to place a billboard at the site where a truck overturned along Interstate 40 near Winston-Salem “in honor of the cows who were injured and killed.”
About half of the 41 cows on board the tractor-trailer died Feb. 18 when it crashed on the way from Kentucky to a slaughterhouse in Asheboro, North Carolina, according to an interview with the driver by WFMY-TV. The driver told the station a family of deer ran into the roadway and he swerved to avoid them.
North Carolina State police said the driver of the truck veered off the highway, and his rig overturned. The driver suffered minor injuries. The crash remains under investigation.
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