Nature Alert: Facts About Cruelty to Animals From PETA and Anjelica Huston Persuade R&R Partners Never to Use Apes in Ads

Friday 25 September 2009

Facts About Cruelty to Animals From PETA and Anjelica Huston Persuade R&R Partners Never to Use Apes in Ads

For Immediate Release:
September 24, 2009

Contact:
Kristie Phelps 757-622-7382

Las Vegas -- After reviewing information supplied by PETA--including a video narrated by film star Anjelica Huston showing that chimpanzees and orangutans used in advertising are removed from their mothers as infants and routinely abused in behind-the-scenes training sessions (trainers have been caught beating and kicking animals)--Las Vegas based advertising agency R&R Partners has promised not to use great apes in any future projects.

"Like human babies, chimpanzee and orangutan infants long to be with their mothers, not scared and alone in barren cages and abused on a hot, noisy set," says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. "We commend R&R Partners for doing its part to stop animal abuse in entertainment."

Many trainers break these intelligent and strong-willed animals through beatings to force them to obey confusing commands and participate in frightening situations. At around the age of 8, when they grow too large to be managed, these animals--who can live to be more than 60 years old--are often discarded at roadside zoos or warehoused for decades in horrifying conditions.

R&R Partners joins Draftfcb, EuroRSCG, the Ad Council, Young & Rubicam, Levi Strauss & Co., Gap Inc., Subaru, Honda, Johnson & Johnson, Keds, PUMA, Yahoo!, SEGA, and other companies and organizations that have committed not to use great apes in ads.

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

http://www.peta.org/mc/NewsItem.asp?id=13590

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.