New PETA Billboard Says Union County Sportsmen’s Club Animals Still Need Help

For Immediate Release:
March 29, 2021

Contact:
Megan Wiltsie 202-483-7382

“Penny Needs Help.” That’s the message near Union County Sportsmen’s Club (UCSC) on U.S. Route 15 where PETA has placed a new billboard advising passersby to shun the shady facility and to help Penny, a peahen there who shares an enclosure with a mound of feces and shows signs of bumblefoot, a painful and potentially fatal condition that can lead to infection of the bone.

The ad comes one year after a vigorous PETA campaign persuaded UCSC to transfer Dillan, an arthritic Asiatic black bear with life-threatening dental disease, to an accredited sanctuary in Colorado. Now, PETA wants Penny and the remaining animals at UCSC to have the same chance to receive proper care, including veterinary treatment, at reputable facilities.

“Dillan’s life went from hellish to heavenly once he could explore, dig, climb, swim, rest, and play in a naturalistic habitat,” says PETA Foundation Associate Director of Captive Animal Law Enforcement Debbie Metzler. “Penny deserves that chance, too—and PETA is willing to foot the bill to make it happen.”

Birds at UCSC have suffered from feather loss and overgrown beaks and have exhibited abnormal pacing behavior, most likely in response to being confined to small, barren cages and deprived of the opportunity to fly, roam, perch, bathe, and forage. UCSC also has a history of failing to provide animals with adequate veterinary care, resulting in the deaths of five fawns when their nursing mothers weren’t fed an adequate diet.

The billboard is located on U.S. Route 15, 8 miles south of Selinsgrove.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to use for entertainment”—opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETA.org or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.