• In Switzerland, a peaceful PETA “cow” made international news when he interrupted an International Olympic Committee meeting to protest the Olympic Rodeo.
• When exotic animal abuser Jack Hanna was a guest on Good Morning America, two PETA activists in the audience unfurled a banner asking for the PETA foe to be banned. It was broadcast live on national television and seen by millions of viewers.
• PETA asked Shaquille O’Neal to abandon his penchant for “canned hunting.” PETA’s letter ran in USA Today and Sports Illustrated.
• In a courtroom saga that ended in victory for animals abused in circuses, PETA’s sad elephant statue—a shackled crying elephant with the inscription, “The Circus Is Coming; See Shackles, Bullhooks, Loneliness … All Under the Big Top”— took her rightful place in the “Party Animals” exhibit in the nation’s capital. The story caused a media frenzy both locally and nationally.
• Target stores stopped selling “AquaBabies,” tiny plastic containers of water containing fish, frogs, and snails, after two years of PETA’s campaigning.
• A Pennsylvania car dealership was giving away baby chicks as a promotion. PETA became involved and the promotion was stopped. Eighty chicks were rescued and went to Oohmahnee sanctuary.
• PETA arranged for a nurse shark, who was kept as a “decoration” at a Michigan bar, to be released into a protected marine mammal preserve in Florida.
• Breaking a 125-year tradition, Von Maur department stores discontinued displaying birds in their stores when PETA contacted the company’s president and explained why the birds should not be there. PETA helped find loving homes for the birds.
