PETA Statement: Zero Justice for Exploited Bear in Jason Momoa Video

For Immediate Release:
November 2, 2019

Contact:
David Perle 202-483-7382

Below, please find a statement from PETA Foundation Director of Captive Animal Law Enforcement Brittany Peet in response to the video posted yesterday by Jason Momoa, in which he lets a bear eat food out of his mouth. The bear was apparently provided by notorious exhibitor Steve Martin’s Working Wildlife—an outfit which has been cited numerous times by the U.S. Department of Agriculture for violating the federal Animal Welfare Act, including for failing to provide animals with adequate veterinary care, locking chimpanzees and orangutans in “night housing” for up to 18 hours a day, denying animals adequate space and shelter, and more:

Momoa apparently doesn’t realize that there’s no behind-the-scenes justice for this exploited bear. Wild animals are often torn away from their mothers as infants and thrown into a life in which trainers frequently use cruel techniques such as food deprivation, beatings, electric shocks, and chaining to force them to perform. Momoa knows how convincing and lifelike computer-generated imagery, animatronics, and other cutting-edge technologies are, but subjecting a bear to the bright lights and bustle of a production set is stressful and totally outdated, so we hope he’ll refuse to participate in stunts involving wild animals in the future.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to use for entertainment or abuse in any other way”—opposes speciesism, which is a human-supremacist view of the world. For more information, please visit PETA.org.