"Animals are not ours to eat, wear, experiment on or use for entertainment.' ................ Ingrid E Newkirk [PETA]..................."We have enslaved the rest of animal creation and have treated our distant cousins in fur and feathers so badly that beyond doubt, if they were to formulate a religion, they would depict the Devil in human form." ................William Ralph Inge......................"Look Deep Into The Eyes Of Any Animal, & Then For A moment, Trade Places, Their Life Becomes As Precious As Yours & You Become As Vulnerable As They. Now Smile If You Believe All Animals Deserve Our Respect & Our Protection, For In Alot Of Ways, THEY ARE US, & WE ARE THEM." '.' "The Soul Is The Same In All Living Creatures, Although The Body Of Each Is Different."............................May all beings be free of suffering...................The best way to help these animals is to stop supporting industries that regard animals as food machines instead of as living beings with feelings, wants, and needs................I am in favour of animal rights as well as human rights, that is the way of a whole human being.............Lincoln.................The greatness of a nation and it's moral progress can be judged by the way it treats it's animals......... M Gandhi........... Animals of the world exist for their own reason. They were not made for humans, anymore than black people were made for whites or women for men..................Alice Walker...... .s

 

In Defense of Animals Action Centre - Click
here to write to Government officials

 

Sample Letter to urge Organisations to discontinue use
of Chimpanzees in Commercials

Dear :

Recently, I was informed that you are using chimpanzees in your [commercials, movies, tv show, etc.]. This is cruel and irresponsible.

To be used in your [commercials, movies, tv show, etc.], these complex and sensitive individuals are bought, sold, leased, and treated as commodities. This is not simply an issue of what happens on screen, but also what happens behind the scenes. Training methods can be violent and can include isolation, beatings, and total domination. This has been documented by animal trainers and trainers turned animal advocates who have said or heard things like, "A bored ape is one who wants to come out and work" In other words, these highly social individuals may be isolated and deprived just to get them desperate enough to come out of their cages to perform.

Further, to get these "performers," families are torn apart---usually only young chimpanzees are used in media performances. One must ask where the parents of these children are, and what kind of lives they are leading, if any. Nonhuman individuals used in media are confined to unnatural lives and may be killed or sent to medical experimentation facilities when they approach maturity.

As a supporter of protection for all animals, I am disappointed and frustrated that you are exploiting these creatures. I urge you to use only humans who can give their consent. Until then, I will not support your company.

Sincerely,

[Your Name]

[Your Address]


The use of chimpanzees and other great apes in entertainment is inappropriate and often very cruel, requiring the animals to perform unnatural acts day after day, on command. Below is a letter from Jane Goodall to professionals in the entertainment and advertising industry outlining the arguments against this brand of animal exploitation.

Dear ______________,

I am writing to ask you to consider an aspect of the advertising trade that you may not have considered before — the cost of using chimpanzees in advertising. As a media professional, your work — now or in the future — may be tied to the use of chimpanzees. I want to share some relevant information, which I'm presenting in a Q&A format so that you can easily share this knowledge with your colleagues.

How are chimpanzees trained to perform?
They are separated from their mothers as infants. This is truly tragic, because in the wild, the child stays with his or her family for at least eight years. Furthermore — trainers require obedient subjects. Although it is possible to train animals using only kindness, reward and praise, this requires the kind of time and patience which simply are lacking in the fast-moving world of show-business. Many trainers will admit that they beat their performers during training. In many cases the abuse is horrendous.

What happens to the performers after they reach puberty?
When they are six to eight years old, they typically become more difficult to handle. To make them manageable, trainers may have the chimps' teeth pulled or may fit them with shock collars under their clothes.

But usually the performers, when they are no longer amenable to discipline, are discarded. And it is becoming harder and harder to place them. Like human children, ape children learn by watching adults and imitating their behavior. They learn in a social context. And individuals who have no chance to grow up in a normal group not only fail to learn the nuances of chimp etiquette, but in addition are likely to show abnormal behaviors. These chimps are not accepted by accredited zoos. They tend not to fit into established groups. And so, unless they can be placed in one of the few sanctuaries for abused, surplus chimps, they will end up in roadside zoos or being quietly euthanized.

Does using chimpanzees in entertainment and advertising help people to appreciate them more?
The use of chimpanzees for advertising is so at odds with the individual's normal life and habits, and creates terribly wrong perceptions of these amazing creatures. Do you realize that the chimpanzee's smile so often seen on TV is actually a grin of fear? These trained performers suffer greatly for our amusement.

Because performing chimpanzees and orangutans are young (the adults are far too large, powerful, and potentially dangerous), people have the impression that these apes are small, cute and cuddly. They can have no concept of the majesty of the full-grown animal. And it is this unrealistic picture that perpetuates the continued buying and selling of young chimpanzees as "pets."

At least entertainment chimpanzees don't represent a drain on wild populations.
Many people don't realize chimpanzees are endangered in the wild, as are all the other great apes — gorillas, orangutans and bonobos. In fact, the number of human beings born every day is greater than the number of other remaining great apes in the wild. And while it is true that circus chimpanzees in North America were bred in captivity, this is not necessarily true in parts of the world where the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species either has not been ratified or is not enforced. And so European circuses or side-shows may well travel with chimpanzee or orangutan performers who were born in the wild. Thus the use of apes (and other endangered species) in entertainment does represent a drain on rapidly decreasing wild populations.

Many of these arguments also apply to the use of other exotic animals such as lions, tigers, elephants and bears. Especially considering the new abilities of animatronics and other computer imagery, there is really no justification for forcing these amazing creatures to suffer for our amusement or gain. I hope you'll join the growing number of businesses that refuse to sanction or participate in this gross misuse of creatures who are vulnerable to our exploitation precisely because they are so like us.

Sincerely,

Jane Goodall, PhD, DBE

 



http://www.nihchimpcruelty.com/



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