New Billboard Challenges Animal Experimenters’ ‘Speciesism’
As the American Association for Laboratory Animal Science Gathers, PETA Ad Counters the Damaging Myth That Humans Are Superior to All Other Animals
For Immediate Release:
October 14, 2019
Contact:
Tasgola Bruner 202-483-7382
PETA has a message for the American Association for Laboratory Animal Science as members arrive for its national meeting this week: A new billboard shows a mouse, a rooster, and a chimpanzee urging, “#EndSpeciesism. We Also Feel Pain, Love, Joy, and Fear.”
The billboard is located at 1112 Speer Blvd.
The ad is part of PETA’s new national campaign against the old belief that—despite their extraordinary talents, abilities, and intelligence—all other animal species are inferior to our own and that it’s acceptable to exploit them.
“From mice to men, all animals are made of flesh and blood, feel pain and fear, desire freedom, love their offspring, have unique personalities, and value their own lives,” says PETA President Ingrid Newkirk. “PETA’s billboard encourages people to fight speciesism by valuing all animals for who they are as individuals, not for the ways they can be exploited.”
Because of human prejudice, more than 100 million animals suffer and die in the U.S. every year in cruel chemical, drug, food, and cosmetics tests; in medical training exercises; in curiosity-driven medical experiments at universities; and in classroom biology experiments and dissection. No experiment, no matter how painful, is prohibited by law—but 90% of basic scientific studies, most of which involve animals, fail to lead to treatments for humans, and 95% of new drugs that test safe and effective in animals fail in human trials.
PETA—whose motto reads, “Animals are not ours to experiment on, eat, wear, use for entertainment, or abuse in any other way”—encourages everyone to combat speciesism by buying cosmetics that weren’t tested on animals and otherwise rejecting the exploitation of all animals.
PETA’s #EndSpeciesism ads will also run this year on bike racks, bus shelters, and other billboards around the country.
For more information, please visit PETA.org.
