(WWJ) Some first responders said scene they witnessed was pretty tough to deal with, according to Michigan State Police.
Now PETA is preparing to place a billboard near a crash site along I-94 in Detroit to honor the 18 cows shot dead after being severely injured when a truck carrying them rolled over on a ramp.
The planned sign will include an image of a cow, with the message: “See the Individual. Go Vegan.”
According to MSP First Lt. Mike Shaw, speed was a factor in the crash that shut down the westbound I-94 ramp to southbound I-75 for 17 hours, early this week.
Shaw told WWJ Newsradio 950 that some animals were killed in the crash while others were so badly injured that had to be euthanized on the scene.
"You never ever want to be put in that position, but sometimes it's the most humane thing you can do is to end their suffering," Shaw said. "So we unfortunately get stuck with that quite often during during car-deer crashes, and other events with livestock."
Crews worked overnight to clear the wreckage.
About 20 cows survived.
“Witnesses saw these cows lie on the roadside in pain and terror for over 10 hours before they were finally shot in the head,” said PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman, in a news release. “PETA’s ad encourages anyone disturbed by the thought of these animals’ prolonged, horrific deaths — or by the thought of their sisters’ fate under the slaughterhouse knife — to go vegan.”
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The truck was apparently transporting Holstein cows, the breed most often used by the dairy industry, in which PETA says workers artificially inseminate female cows and tear calves away from their mothers within a day of birth. They ship male calves off to be slaughtered for veal, while females endure repeated forced pregnancies until they’re slaughtered for cheap meat.
There were at least 89 crashes last year and at least 12 so far this year involving trucks carrying animals used for food, according to PETA.
The group — whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to eat or abuse in any other way” — opposes "speciesism," described as a "human-supremacist" worldview.
According to PETA, "Each person who goes vegan saves the lives of nearly 200 cows, pigs, chickens and other animals every year and helps prevent future epidemics and pandemics: Confining and killing animals for food has been linked to SARS, swine flu, bird flu, and COVID-19."