Airline Cuts Ties With Park as Senate Passes Bill to Outlaw Whale, Dolphin Captivity in Canada
For Immediate Release:
October 29, 2018
Contact:
David Perle 202-483-7382
Montréal – After more than 113,000 PETA supporters e-mailed the airline on PETA’s behalf requesting that it stop selling SeaWorld tickets, Air Canada has removed that option from its website. The company’s move preceded the Senate’s passage of Bill S-203, which seeks to make it a criminal offence to keep cetaceans in captivity or breed them.
“Both lawmakers and corporations recognize that confining sea animals to tiny concrete cells and depriving them of the life that they were meant to have is abusive,” says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. “PETA asks anyone traveling to the U.S. to stay away from SeaWorld’s marine abusement parks and to support only travel providers that don’t bankroll cruelty to animals.”
At least 40 orcas, over 300 other dolphins and whales, and approximately 450 seals, sea lions, and walruses have died at SeaWorld’s parks. The company and its former CEO recently agreed to pay $5 million to settle the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s charges that the company misled investors about the negative impact of the hard-hitting documentary Blackfish, and a class-action lawsuit against SeaWorld by shareholders as well as a criminal investigation against it conducted by the U.S. Department of Justice are currently active.
PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to use for entertainment”—pushed for SeaWorld to ban orca breeding, which it eventually did, and is urging the company to close its tiny tanks and move the orcas and other animals to seaside sanctuaries where they could enjoy a more natural life.
Air Canada joins a growing list of companies—including Hyundai Motor America, Panama Jack, Taco Bell, Thomas Cook, and WestJet, JetBlue, and Southwest airlines—that have cut ties with SeaWorld, and PETA is now calling on Sunwing Travel Group to follow suit.
For more information, please visit SeaWorldOfHurt.com.
