Nature Alert: Company Sets New Policy After PETA Appeal

Wednesday 6 May 2009

Company Sets New Policy After PETA Appeal

Company Sets New Policy After PETA Appeal

For Immediate Release:
May 5, 2009

Contact:
Kristie Phelps 757-622-7382

San Francisco -- After learning from PETA about the abuse that chimpanzees and orangutans who are used in advertising endure as part of their behind-the-scenes training, San Francisco�based clothing giants Levi Strauss & Co. and Gap Inc. have pledged never to use great apes in their ads again, and Levi Strauss has also extended the pledge to cover any other endangered animals. In 2008, Levi Strauss created a viral video that featured a live orangutan, and Gap Inc. used Travis--the chimpanzee who recently attacked and severely maimed a Connecticut woman--in an Old Navy ad.

Eyewitnesses--including a primatologist who spent 14 months working in a California facility--have said that trainers beat and kick willful young apes and sometimes use electric prods to force them to sit still under hot studio lights for hours and obey commands that are confusing and meaningless to them. Chimpanzees and orangutans who are used in ads are usually only a few years old. They are separated from their mothers prematurely, which causes severe trauma to both the mothers and babies. When they reach adolescence at around 8 years old, they become too powerful to control and are often discarded at roadside zoos or sent to cheap traveling shows.

Levi Strauss and Gap Inc. join Subaru, Honda, Keds, PUMA, Young & Rubicam (the fourth-largest ad agency in the U.S. by revenue), Yahoo!, SEGA, the Ad Council, and other companies and organizations that have pledged not to use great apes in ads. As a token of its appreciation, PETA sent Levi Strauss vegan-chocolate great apes.

"Chimpanzee and orangutan infants, like human babies, deserve to be safe with their mothers, not beaten behind the scenes or sitting alone and scared on a set somewhere," says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. "By recognizing that these animals need protection, not exploitation, Levi Strauss and Gap Inc. will help PETA end cruelty in advertising."

For more information about PETA, please visit PETA.org.

Hall of Shame for President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and the Palm Oil Industry.

Nothing can prepare one for the sight of the systematic extermination of orangutans by the government of Indonesia.

Look at the photos and news articles on these pages in the context of a statement the President made to the media on 10th December 2007.

“In the last 35 years about 50,000 orangutans are estimated to have been lost as their habitats shrank. If this continues, this majestic creature will likely face extinction by 2050,” President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said at the launch of an orangutan conservation plan at the climate talks in Bali.

“The fate of the orangutan is a subject that goes to the heart of sustainable forests … To save the orangutan we have to save the forest.”

Statements like these are most welcome, but unless backed up by action, such words fall on deaf ears within the Ministry of Forestry....who are busy granting licences to cut down the very forests the President says they should protect!

When you think you are to busy to help, please could you reflect for a moment on .........

The following extract refers to environmental problems in general. I just hope you find it as thought provoking and relevant to orangutans as I have.

"This is such a shocking and unpalatable fact that most people deny it, or they just don't want to think about it. They believe as individuals, they can do little about it, so push it to the back of their minds. But I can't do that.

When something has to be done, we need to do it. It doesn't matter how big the challenge is or how hard the solution; if I know something is wrong, and I am in a position to help, I will do my best to make it right." Duncan Bannatyne, successful British businessman.