Award-Winning Ad Agency to Give Apes a Break

PETA Video Narrated by Anjelica Huston Persuades Sanders\Wingo Never to Use Apes in Ads

For Immediate Release:
January 19, 2010

Contact:
Julia Gallucci 757-622-7382

El Paso, Texas -- After meeting with PETA and reviewing a video narrated by film star Anjelica Huston, El Paso-based advertising agency Sanders\Wingo has promised not to use great apes in any future projects. The video shows that chimpanzees and orangutans who are used in advertising are removed from their mothers as infants and routinely abused during behind-the-scenes training sessions. Trainers have been caught beating and kicking animals.

"Like human babies, chimpanzee and orangutan infants long to be with their mothers--not scared and alone in barren cages and forced to perform under the threat of a beating," says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. "We commend Sanders\Wingo for doing its part to stop animal abuse in entertainment."

Many trainers break these intelligent and strong-willed animals through beatings to force them to obey confusing commands and participate in frightening situations. At around age 8, when the chimpanzees and orangutans grow too large to be managed, these animals--who can live to be more than 60 years old--are often discarded at squalid roadside zoos or warehoused for decades and forced to endure a lifetime of boredom and isolation.

Sanders\Wingo--which was named 2009 Agency of the Year by Black Enterprise magazine--joins BBDO, Draftfcb, EuroRSCG, the Ad Council, Young & Rubicam, Levi Strauss & Co., Gap Inc., Subaru, Honda, Johnson & Johnson, Keds, PUMA, Yahoo!, SEGA, and other companies and organizations that have committed not to use great apes in ads.

For more information about PETA, please visit PETA.org.