American Greetings CEO to Face Chiding ‘Chimpanzee’

For Immediate Release:
March 29, 2022

Contact:
Brooke Rossi 202-483-7382

As American Greetings CEO Joe Arcuri arrives home from work on Thursday, he’ll be greeted by a “chimpanzee” mascot and PETA supporters who will be gathering to remind him that it’s high time that his company stopped selling cards that exploit great apes.

When:    Thursday, March 31, 5:15 p.m.

Where:    Arcuri’s home

In 2016, American Greetings agreed to stop distributing greeting cards featuring Connor after PETA alerted the company to his life of abuse, yet it continues to sell cards featuring other equally exploited chimpanzees as well as other great apes put into costumes and showing the fear grimace often mistaken by customers for a grin. Such images increase the demand for great ape babies, taken away from their mothers to become “pets,” and hinder conservation efforts by misleading the public into believing that chimpanzees—endangered animals—are prevalent in nature.

“There’s nothing funny or forward-thinking about a company that profits from the exploitation of endangered great apes in human costumes and poses,” says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. “PETA is calling on American Greetings to stop producing cards featuring great apes who need to be protected, not ridiculed.”

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.