Theme Park Set to Drag Live Penguins to Cocktail Party at Bagatelle
For Immediate Release:
January 13, 2014
Contact:
David Perle 202-483-7382
New York – West Village restaurant Bagatelle has ignored appeals by PETA and plans to allow SeaWorld to throw a cocktail party at which penguins are to be used as living props on Tuesday. In response, PETA members will flock to the restaurant with signs reading, “Penguins Belong in the Wild, Not NYC,” for a silent protest—so as not to scare the penguins further—against SeaWorld’s cruelty to animals.
When: Tuesday, January 14, 6 p.m.
Where: Bagatelle, 1 Little West 12th St., New York
As PETA has pointed out in its e-mails to Bagatelle management, this event is doubly cruel: Forcing wild animals such as penguins into close public contact leaves them agitated and frightened, as does transporting them to the venue, and SeaWorld’s very business model revolves around locking far-ranging orcas in tiny concrete tanks, where they suffer physically and psychologically from the constant deprivation of confinement. Thanks to the hit documentary Blackfish, public opinion is turning against SeaWorld.
“Animals suffer when you put them where they don’t belong—and penguins don’t belong at a New York City cocktail party any more than orcas belong in tiny concrete tanks,” says PETA Foundation Deputy General Counsel of Captive Animal Law Enforcement Delcianna Winders. “If Bagatelle allows this event to go forward, the restaurant will be complicit in SeaWorld’s abuse of animals.”
Among the protesters will be 12-year-old Tribeca resident Rose McCoy, who has grabbed headlines in recent months for disrupting the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade and the Rose Parade to protest SeaWorld’s floats at the events.
For more information, please visit SeaWorldOfHurt.com.
