Ad Van, Billboards Call Out Defence Minister Ben Wallace’s ‘Bear-Faced Lies’
Ad Van, Billboards Call Out Defence Minister Ben Wallace’s ‘Bear-Faced Lies’
Preston – Today, as part of its campaign calling on Defence Minister Ben Wallace, MP for Wyre and Preston North, to replace the bearskin used for the Queen’s Guard’s caps with faux fur, PETA is rolling an unmissable mobile billboard through his constituency with a powerful message: stop telling bear-faced lies. A faux fur exists – use it!
In addition, two giant billboards – located here and here – with the same visual have been erected in the Preston area and will be up until April 28.
The defence secretary nose that the Queen’s Guard’s bearskin caps could easily be replaced with ones made from faux bear fur – yet he is misleading the public by insisting no suitable non-animal alternative exists. This is a bear-faced lie. PETA and top faux-furrier ECOPEL have created the world’s first faux bearskin which matches the exact length of real bear fur, performs similarly in “water shedding” tests, and is 100% waterproof.
High-resolution images of the mobile billboard and billboards are available here.
“A humane replacement for the bear fur used for the Queen’s Guard’s caps now exists, but Ben Wallace and the MoD are stonewalling it,” says PETA Senior Campaigns Manager Kate Werner. “The world’s most celebrated and accomplished designers have all ditched real fur, and if they can do it, so can the MoD for its ceremonial headgear.”
PETA notes that it takes the skin of at least one bear to make a single cap. Some bears are shot several times before they die, and some escape only to bleed to death. When mother bears are killed, their cubs are left to starve. Despite the Ministry of Defence’s (MoD) claims that bears are killed as part of Canadian government culls, PETA has found no evidence that any culls of this sort exist.
Wallace has a long history of actively opposing any switch to faux fur for the caps. PETA has launched a government e-petition on the issue, which, if it reaches 100,000 signatures, will trigger a parliamentary debate, restoring the power to the British public to demand a modern, humane alternative that would save taxpayers money and spare bears’ lives.
For more information about the misinformation peddled by the MoD about the use of bearskins, please see here. PETA – whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to wear” – opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview.
For more information, please visit PETA.org.uk or follow the group on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram.
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