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CALDWELL, Idaho - “Chicken Dinner Road” is a real street in Caldwell, Idaho, and PETA is hoping to change that.
According to local lore, the street originally got its name when Governor C. Ben Ross was persuaded with a fried chicken dinner to have the road fixed.
But the Executive Vice President of PETA, Tracy Reiman, sent a letter to Caldwell Mayor Garret L. Nancolas urging him to change the name to something a bit kinder — she suggested simply removing the mention of dinner and calling the road “Chicken Road.”
“Just like dogs, cats, and human beings, chickens feel pain and fear and value their own lives,” says Reiman. “PETA is asking Mayor Nancolas to change this road’s name to one that celebrates chickens as individuals, not as beings to kill, chop up, and label as ‘dinner.'”
Reiman argued in her letter that chickens are intelligent animals, “Even young chicks can count and perform basic addition and subtraction.”
PETA, an animal rights group that opposes speciesism — also referred to as a human-supremacist worldview — emphasizes that words can be powerful tools with the ability to affect the way humans view things.
Should Nancolas decide to change the name of the roadway, PETA has offered to contribute to the cost of new signs.