Will ‘Tiger King’ Make Britney, Cardi B, and Shakira Swear Off Animal Acts?
PETA Calls On Musicians to Keep Wild Animals out of Their Music Videos and Performances
For Immediate Release:
April 3, 2020
Contact:
Moira Colley 202-483-7382
As everyone is watching Netflix’s Tiger King—which exposes the abusive and deadly underworld of exotic-animal exhibitors—PETA has sent letters calling on Britney Spears, Cardi B, Calvin Harris, Janet Jackson, Shakira, the former members of One Direction, and a slew of other musicians to pledge never to perform with wild animals again.
“Anyone who’s watched Tiger King has seen how wild animals suffer when they’re taken from their mothers as babies and exploited as props,” says PETA Foundation Director of Captive Animal Law Enforcement Brittany Peet, who appears in the docuseries. “PETA is asking for some social distancing: Tigers, snakes, and cheetahs belong in nature, not in music videos or on stages.”
Tiger King features notorious animal exhibitors like Joseph Maldonado-Passage (aka “Joe Exotic”), “Doc” Antle, Tim Stark, Jeff Lowe, and others who breed animals for profit, separate babies from their mothers, and deprive them of everything that’s natural and important to them. Many are still operating, despite criminal rap sheets and lengthy histories of federal Animal Welfare Act violations.
PETA has been working for years to shut down facilities that exploit wild animals. The group rescued nearly 50 animals who were in Maldonado-Passage’s custody, all of whom are currently at reputable sanctuaries, and filed two lawsuits against facilities that acquired big-cat cubs from him. PETA just prevailed in one of these lawsuits, and the last six tigers held at a roadside zoo called Dade City’s Wild Things arrived at an accredited sanctuary this week.
Other celebrities PETA is contacting regarding this issue include Ashanti, Nas, Maluma, P. Diddy, Pharrell, and Rick Ross.
PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to use for entertainment”—opposes speciesism, which is the human-supremacist worldview that other animals are disposable. For more information, please visit PETA.org.
