Written by Jeff Mackey
Update: We have an exciting development to report! Invasive experiments on chimpanzees and other great apes are closer to being history in the United States now that the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee has voted to advance the Great Ape Protection and Cost Savings Act to the full Senate.
We want to thank everyone who responded to PETA's call to urge senators on the committee to pass the bill. Now let's make sure that this lifesaving measure becomes law—please contact your U.S. legislators and encourage them to support the great-ape bill when it comes up for a vote!
Originally published April 23, 2012:
In advance of the April 24 U.S. Senate hearing on the historic Great Ape Protection and Cost Savings Act (GAPCSA), PETA sent members of Congress a print of a painting along with a photo of and a letter about the artist—a chimpanzee named Jamie, who was rescued from a laboratory.
Photo: Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest
From Experiments to Expressionism
Jamie, now 34 years old, spent more than 20 years alone in a cage in the windowless basement of a Pennsylvania laboratory, where she was used in hepatitis experiments. In 2008, she—along with six other chimpanzees from the same laboratory—was rescued with PETA's help by Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest. Jamie now spends her days relaxing, playing outdoors with her friends, and expressing herself through art, including pen drawings and finger paintings. You can watch her creativity in action here.
GAPCSA would ban invasive experiments on chimpanzees, retire more than 600 federally owned chimpanzees to sanctuaries, and save taxpayers millions of dollars a year. PETA hopes Jamie's artwork and photo will help legislators put a face to this lifesaving bill at a critical moment.
How You Can Help Great Apes Like Jamie
Please contact your U.S. representative and senators and urge them to cosponsor and support the Great Ape Protection and Cost Savings Act.
Written by Michelle Kretzer
If you saw CareerBuilder's latest Super Bowl ad, you probably thought it was as lame as we did, which is why we came up with an ad of our own in response. Unfortunately, we received a "thanks, but no thanks" from Clear Channel Outdoor in CareerBuilder's hometown of Chicago, after we asked to place this billboard near a CareerBuilder vice president's neighborhood:
While we may not have gotten the billboard placed, at least we're not feeling like Tom Brady and the Pats today.
With your help, not even the Giants defense could stop us from telling CareerBuilder to can the cruel chimpanzee ads.
PETA has named CareerBuilder the 2012 "Ass-Backwards" Corporation of the Year. The job-search company earned this (dis)honor for proving that it's obliviously behind the times, having decided to run yet another Super Bowl ad that features exploited infant chimpanzees—even though it knows how great apes suffer at the hands of the "entertainment" industry.
Face: © iStockphoto.com/Dogan Eskiyoruk • Body: © iStockphoto.com/Eric Isselée • Trophy: © iStockphoto.com/DNY59
Nine of the top 10 ad agencies in the U.S. have already committed never to use great apes in their ads, as have many major corporations, including CareerBuilder's main competitor, Monster. Yet CareerBuilder proves that it's creatively and ethically bankrupt by continuing to rely on the same cruel and played-out tactic year after year.
Chimpanzees used in the entertainment industry are torn away from their mothers, beaten and brutally trained behind the scenes to make them compliant on the set, and discarded—usually at unaccredited roadside zoos (or otherwise warehoused in appalling conditions)—when they become too strong to be handled safely.
CareerBuilder executives know all this—because PETA and its supporters have told them so repeatedly—and they also know that computer-generated imagery would allow them to create the same ads without causing animals to suffer. Yet they continue to run these irresponsible ads again and again.
Because of CareerBuilder's willingness to ignore animals' suffering and the well-founded concerns of a large percentage of its potential audience, PETA has bestowed upon the company the distinction of being 2012's "Ass-Backwards" Corporation of the Year!
After learning that CareerBuilder is once again using baby chimpanzees in a Super Bowl ad, Anjelica Huston has teamed up with PETA to urge the company's CEO, Matt Ferguson, to stop using chimpanzees in its commercials—unless they are created using cutting-edge computer animation, like the conscientious folks behind Pfizer's Robitussin "orangutan" ads and the movie Rise of the Planet of the Apes have done, saving animals from being taken away from their families, cruelly trained, and then abandoned when they can no longer be controlled.
Anjelica—soon to be seen in NBC's Smash—has been a strong supporter of PETA's campaigns to end the use of chimpanzees and other great apes who are forced to work as "performers" in films and on television. In her letter, the Oscar-winning actor, well, smashes CareerBuilder's excuses, pointing out that monitoring on-set action doesn't prevent the cruelty that happens before and after the ad is shot, as described in the video Anjelica narrated for PETA on the subject.
As Anjelica's letter to Ferguson states, "It is astonishing that you are unmoved by the videos, photographs, and case reports of what befalls these animals from the moment they are taken from their mothers to the moment they die." Let's hope he finally gets the message and that this will be the last year that the big game will be interrupted by images of real baby chimpanzees performing stupid tricks in a sad attempt to appeal to clueless job-seekers.
Written by PETA
Last week, champagne corks were popping at PETA HQ following the National Institutes of Health's (NIH) announcement that it is suspending funding for new experiments on chimpanzees because most of these studies are as scientifically unjustifiable as they are morally bankrupt.
Now we want to make certain that the rest of the vile vivisection industry gets the message too. So we purchased stock in the notorious private contract laboratory BIOQUAL for the express purpose of introducing a shareholder resolution calling on the company to stop tormenting chimpanzees in experiments.
For all you animal rights historians, BIOQUAL used to be called SEMA and was the site of a famous 1987 nighttime raid that blew the lid off the abysmal conditions for chimpanzees in laboratories. Video footage taken inside the facility revealed that baby chimpanzees were locked individually in tiny steel boxes in rooms so dark that employees had to bring flashlights to check on them. Following the release of the footage, Jane Goodall visited the laboratory and was so horrified that she called for its closure, describing it as "one of the very worst."
Apparently, not much has changed at BIOQUAL in the last quarter century. In one recent experiment at the facility, six young chimpanzees were separated from their mothers, locked in individual cages, and exposed to norovirus, which causes diarrhea, vomiting, and stomach pain. The chimpanzees—who were as young as 2 years old—were then subjected to months of painful biopsies in which pieces of their organs were removed. The recent Institute of Medicine report determined that norovirus is one of the many diseases for which chimpanzees are not needed in order to find a cure.
While we hit BIOQUAL's boardroom to try to talk some sense into the hard-hearted execs there, you can help chimpanzees by clicking here to ask your members of Congress to cosponsor and support the Great Ape Protection and Cost Savings Act, which would prohibit all invasive experiments on chimpanzees and other great apes.
Written by Jeremy Beckham
Written by Heather Faraid Drennan
Despite Conrad Murray's manslaughter conviction, there will probably always be unanswered questions about Michael Jackson's life and death. Questions about what happened to the exotic animals Jackson kept as "pets" may never be answered either, since the whereabouts of some of the animals aren't known.
The famous chimpanzee Bubbles, whom Jackson took everywhere with him at one time, was one of the first animals to leave the Neverland Ranch, when he ceased to be a cute and cuddly youngster and became a strong, aggressive adolescent. Bubbles was lucky enough to wind up at a reputable sanctuary, as were two tigers who once lived at Neverland.
But despite Jackson's directive that the animals go to the best homes possible, many of the animals ended up at pseudo-sanctuaries, where they received woefully inadequate care because of either ignorance or willful neglect. Two giraffes from Jackson's zoo, for example, died just weeks apart at Tom and Freddie Hancock's Banjoko Wildlife Preserve, possibly as a result of exposure to cold temperatures and/or improper feeding. Two more giraffes and several parrots from Neverland remain with the Hancocks.
The alligators and a python named Madonna, purchased by Jackson, now live at a roadside zoo in Oklahoma. Thirteen flamingos were sent to a zoo in New Jersey. Two orangutans went to live with a private owner in Connecticut.
If the King of Pop couldn't afford to keep exotic animals as pets, imagine the neglect faced by animals held by people with far fewer resources. The exotic-animal owner in Ohio who released two dozen animals before killing himself last month did so after facing mounting financial difficulties. Please click here to urge Ohio officials to permanently ban exotic-animal ownership, and never visit a roadside zoo or pseudo-sanctuary, where discarded former "pets" languish.
As part of a four-part series on chimpanzees in laboratories published this week, Wired.com tells the story of a chimpanzee named Katrina who was taken from her mother as an infant to be infected with HIV and hepatitis B and C, even though chimpanzees' bodies don't react to these diseases in the same way as humans' do. Katrina was anesthetized almost 300 times by the age of 15 and was never given any painkillers after numerous invasive liver biopsies. This caged, lonely life, punctuated by fear and pain, so traumatized Katrina that she developed symptoms of severe post-traumatic stress disorder and has lost a third of her body weight.
Tragically, despite the fact that Katrina was supposedly retired in 2002, she is one of 14 chimpanzees who were sent to the Southwest Foundation for Biomedical Research eight years later for use in more invasive and painful infectious disease experiments. (Pressure from PETA and other groups successfully halted the transfer of 200 other chimpanzees.) Katrina's plight graphically illustrates how high the stakes are in the fight to ban experiments on great apes.
The Wired series and another story that ran this week in The New York Times come just weeks before the Institute of Medicine's scheduled December release of its report on the issue.
Last month, the editors at Scientific American came out in favor of banning experiments on chimpanzees. To continue to build momentum for the ban, please also post positive comments in response to the Wired and Times articles. Click here to ask your members of Congress to support the Great Ape Protection and Cost Savings Act, which would ban invasive experiments on all great apes and retire all federally owned chimpanzees currently in laboratories to sanctuaries.
In response to the tragic bloodshed that occurred in Zanesville, Ohio, on Tuesday, the governor of Ohio has issued an executive order that directs state agencies to increase inspections of facilities that harbor exotic animals and sets up a hotline for the public to report unsafe exotic-animal situations. While PETA is glad that the governor is finally taking action on this issue, it is too little, too late, for the dozens of animals who were shot dead in Zanesville.
The executive order does nothing to address the fundamental problem—the fact that the state of Ohio allows private citizens to keep wild animals, which poses a danger to both animals and people. Just last year, a privately held bear mauled and killed a young man in Cleveland. That's why PETA is calling on the Ohio Department of Natural Resources to exercise its authority to implement emergency regulations to prohibit the keeping of exotic and wild animals immediately.
The governor's executive order indicates that a legal framework for regulating dangerous wild animals will be proposed by November 30, but there is no need for delay: A ban on the private ownership of wild animals should be put in place right away.
Exotic and wild animals kept as pets always pay the price, whether they are shot and killed, as happened in Zanesville, or confined to backyards, basements, or garages, forced to lead lonely, desolate lives that are devoid of anything that they would experience naturally in the wild.
PETA, along with other animal protection organizations, sanctuaries, zoological facilities, the Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA), the American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA), and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), condemns the private ownership of exotic and wild animals as pets—both for the animals' protection and the public's safety.
Please click here to visit the Ohio Department of Natural Resources website and politely urge the agency to exercise its authority to implement emergency regulations to prohibit the keeping of exotic and wild animals. Let's help ensure that a tragedy like the one in Zanesville has little chance of happening again.
After three decades in captivity, a group of 38 chimpanzees who had been abused in painful hepatitis and HIV experiments in an Austrian laboratory were finally released to a sanctuary, where they can spend the rest of their lives in peaceful retirement. A television camera operator captured the awe-inspiring moment when the chimpanzees cautiously stepped out of their enclosures and into daylight for the first time in 30 years, embracing one another to celebrate their newfound freedom.
These chimpanzees have not been used in experiments for more than 10 years, but their future was in limbo when the Austrian safari park where they were living went bankrupt. It was believed that the group would be split up and sent to zoos around Europe. But animal advocates around the world, including PETA and our members and supporters, wrote to the drug company that sent the chimpanzees to the park and implored it to ensure that the chimpanzees would be sent to a sanctuary and not be separated from one another. Thanks to those of you who spoke out, the chimpanzees are now living together happily at an animal sanctuary where they can feel the grass under their feet and the wind on their faces for the first time in decades!
While it's wonderful that these chimpanzees now have a safe haven, chimpanzees in the U.S. continue to be locked up and abused in laboratories, as PETA spelled out in a column in today's issue of the influential D.C. newspaper The Hill. You can help give their story a happy ending, too, by asking your congressional representatives to support the Great Ape Protection and Cost Savings Act (H.R. 1513/S. 810), which will permanently end invasive experiments on all great apes in the U.S. and retire hundreds of chimpanzees to sanctuaries. Can't wait to see those videos!
Chimpanzees used in laboratory experiments have been a hot topic this summer, from the film Rise of the Planet of the Apes to the National Academy of Sciences' Institute of Medicine hearings on the use of chimpanzees for experimentation. Now, Unsaid, a new novel by Neil Abramson, movingly explores the ways in which animals—including a chimpanzee, Cindy, who communicates with sign language—impact the lives of the humans who care for and about them.
The novel takes us on the journey of David Colden, an attorney who is mourning his wife's death while defending sign-language researcher Dr. Cassidy, who has raised Cindy from infancy and who will do anything—including breaking the law—to prevent the young chimpanzee from being sent to a laboratory.
I wanted to cheer when Colden told the court: "There was a crime committed here—but it wasn't by Dr. Cassidy. The crime is by those who would torture a thinking, feeling, caring, intelligent creature and expect others to sit idle amid the torrent of blood and screams."
In some ways, Dr. Cassidy's story mirrors the real life work of Dr. Roger Fouts, who has spent decades teaching sign language to chimpanzees. Because he doesn't "own" all the apes he works with, some of them have been sold to laboratories over the years, including Booee, whom Fouts, trailed by a 20/20 film crew, visited in a laboratory years later with heartbreaking results. The ensuing public outcry resulted in Booee being sent to a sanctuary.
Unsaid: A Novel is available from Amazon.
Written by Michelle Sherrow
If you have a general question for PETA and would like a response, please e-mail Info@peta.org. If you need to report cruelty to an animal, please click here. If you are reporting an animal in imminent danger and know where to find the animal and if the abuse is taking place right now, please call your local police department. If the police are unresponsive, please call PETA immediately at 757-622-7382 and press 2.
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