Penguins Used as Live Props Draw PETA Protest to Travel Expo
Group Calls On Mayor Gray to Stop SeaWorld From Dragging Animals to D.C. Convention Center
For Immediate Release:
February 21, 2014
Contact:
David Perle 202-483-7382
The Washington DC Travel & Adventure Show hasn’t gotten the message about SeaWorld that everyone who has watched Blackfish or seen a documentary about penguins has. It’s permitting SeaWorld to tout its much-decried marine-mammal shows and to take live penguins to the expo for use as living props—and that’s why PETA has sent an urgent letter asking Mayor Vincent Gray to stop SeaWorld from bringing the sensitive animals into the district. And to make sure that conventioneers get the message, PETA members will gather outside the expo on Saturday to protest SeaWorld’s acts of cruelty to animals.
When: Saturday, February 22, 12 noon
Where: Walter E. Washington Convention Center, 801 Mt. Vernon Pl. N.W., Washington
“Wild animals suffer greatly when you put them where they don’t belong—and penguins don’t belong at a travel convention any more than orcas belong in concrete tanks,” says PETA Foundation Deputy General Counsel Delcianna Winders. “If the Washington DC Travel & Adventure Show allows this event to go forward, the expo will be complicit in SeaWorld’s abuse of animals.”
Last month, a New York City restaurant pulled the plug on SeaWorld’s 50th anniversary bash after learning from PETA that transporting wild animals such as penguins across the country for photo ops and forcing them into close public contact leaves them agitated and frightened—and that SeaWorld’s very business model revolves around locking far-ranging orcas in tiny concrete tanks, where they suffer physically and psychologically from the constant deprivation of confinement.
