Phoenix Company Wins PETA Award for Hot-Car Warning Signs

For Immediate Release:
August 23, 2021

Contact:
Tapi Mbundure 202-483-7382

A Compassionate Business Award is on its way from PETA to locally based BIG Shopping Centers USA for designing and installing warning signs about the dangers of leaving animals and children in parked cars. The property management group’s decision follows discussions with PETA.

“Even ‘quick errands’ can end in tragedy, since temperatures inside parked cars can soar to triple digits within minutes,” says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. “By answering PETA’s call for warning signs, BIG Shopping Centers USA is helping to prevent animals and children from enduring terrible heatstroke deaths.”

This year, the heat-related deaths of 31 companion animals have already made the news—and countless more have suffered and died out of the public eye. Anyone who sees a dog or a child in a parked vehicle should take immediate action: Write down the color, make, model, and license plate number, and rush to have nearby stores page the owner of the car—and if the owner can’t be found, call the local humane authorities or the police. If they’re unresponsive, do whatever it takes to save the individual’s life. PETA offers an emergency window-breaking hammer for intervening in life-or-death situations.

BIG Shopping Centers USA joins a long list of companies—including Walmart, CVS, Walgreens, and Albertsons, which owns Safeway—that have added hot-car warning signs this year. It will receive a framed certificate and a box of delicious vegan dog-shaped chocolates from PETA in thanks.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to abuse in any way”—opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETA.org or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.