PETA Lawsuit Upheld Over Strange and Cruel Opossum Drop

For Immediate Release:
December 12, 2013

Contact:
Sophia Charchuk 202-483-7382

This afternoon, Wake County Superior Court Judge Allen Baddour denied a motion filed by the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission (WRC) to dismiss a lawsuit brought by PETA and several North Carolina citizens that seeks to stop an illegal permit from being issued to allow a wild opossum to be suspended alive in a Plexiglas box and lowered into a noisy crowd at a New Year’s Eve celebration.

PETA has advised the WRC that the nation’s top marsupial experts agree that the so-called “Opossum Drop” is inhumane and that forcing a wild, captive opossum to dangle above a crowd of humans, a primary predator, with screaming celebrants, thumping music, musket fire, and fireworks, frightens the animal so severely that he or she is likely to die after the event from stress-induced illnesses.

PETA’s general counsel Jeff Kerr says, “PETA now continues the case in the hope of relegating this cruel event to the trash heap of history, where it belongs.”

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 Ingrid E. Newkirk

“Almost all of us grew up eating meat, wearing leather, and going to circuses and zoos. We never considered the impact of these actions on the animals involved. For whatever reason, you are now asking the question: Why should animals have rights?” READ MORE

— Ingrid E. Newkirk, PETA President and co-author of Animalkind