Elephant’s Death Should Sound Death Knell for Animal Acts

For Immediate Release:
September 18, 2019

Contact:
David Perle 202-483-7382

Below, please find a statement from PETA Foundation Deputy Director of Captive Animal Law Enforcement Rachel Mathews in response to the death of Beulah, an elephant used by R.W. Commerford & Sons Traveling Petting Zoo at The Big E:

Beulah should have been left to enjoy family, home, and freedom in the wild—but instead, R.W. Commerford & Sons put her in chains and made money off her until the day she died. Her death should be a wake-up call, and PETA is calling on Commerford to give its remaining elephants the desperately needed retirement that Beulah never got—and on The Big E to end its exploitative wild-animal exhibits.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to use for entertainment”—opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. More information about Commerford is available here.