PETA Statement: WHO’s Stance on Live-Animal Markets

For Immediate Release:
May 8, 2020

Contact:
David Perle 202-483-7382

Below, please find a statement from PETA President Ingrid Newkirk in response to the World Health Organization’s announcement today that live-animal markets—despite their being responsible for the current pandemic and a looming threat for future ones—should not be shut down:

The World Health Organization should not be in the business of weighing commerce against human sickness and death and choosing commerce. PETA is calling for live-animal markets to be banned for the sake of every other species sold and slaughtered in them—and for the survival of the human species itself.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to eat”—opposes speciesism, which is a human-supremacist worldview. More information is available at PETA.org.