An animal rights group has tried—and failed—to run a newspaper ad comparing the beheading of a passenger on a Greyhound bus last week to the treatment of animals by the meat industry.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, or PETA, said on its website it would run the ad in the Portage la Prairie Daily Graphic.

However, city editor Tara Seel said the newspaper had no intention of running the ad, which refers to “an innocent victim’s throat” being cut, in reference to the slaughter of cows, chickens and pigs on factory farms.

“His struggles and cries are ignored... the man with the knife shows no emotion... the victim is slaughtered and his head cut off... his flesh is eaten,” reads the ad, which is posted on the website.

“If this ad leaves a bad taste in your mouth, please give a thought to what sensitive animals think and feel when they come to the end of their frightening journey and see, hear and smell the slaughterhouse.”

Seel would not specify why the newspaper chose not to run the ad, except to say it wasn’t something they wanted to do. She noted the newspaper had been inundated with calls from other media since the posting to the PETA website.

Vince Weiguang Li, 40, of Edmonton, has been charged with second-degree murder in the death of 22-year-old carnival worker Tim McLean, who was stabbed and decapitated aboard a Greyhound bus July 30.

“Like human victims, animals in slaughterhouses experience terror when they are attacked by a knife-wielding assailant,” Lindsay Rajt of PETA said in a news release. “We are challenging everyone who is rightly horrified by this crime to look into their hearts and consider leaving violence off their dinner plates.”

Rajt said the ad was intended to be shocking and is meant to spur people to think about the terror and pain experienced by animals who are raised and killed for food.