Olivia Bowen and Belle Hassan Call Out Jet2holidays for Promoting Orca Prisons
Olivia Bowen and Belle Hassan Call Out Jet2holidays for Promoting Orca Prisons
London – Love Island stars Olivia Bowen and Belle Hassan appear in a new video for PETA calling on Jet2holidays – the sponsor of the popular ITV dating show – to couple up with compassion by breaking up with marine abusement parks that exploit orcas and other dolphins.
The video features footage of orcas forced to perform tricks in tiny tanks in Loro Parque in Tenerife and comes in the wake of the death of yet another captive orca – Moana, aged 12, who was imprisoned at Marineland in Antibes, France, a facility Jet2holidays also promotes.
Behind-the-scenes images are also available here.
“By promoting these facilities, you are sentencing orcas and other dolphins to a lifetime of suffering,” Belle tells Jet2holidays. “It’s giving … cruelty.”
PETA – whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to use for entertainment” – notes that while orcas in nature form complex relationships, work cooperatively to find food, and can traverse up to 150 miles of ocean a day, those at marine parks are housed in incompatible groups in cramped tanks filled with chemically-treated water for years or even decades. They are forced to perform confusing tricks for tourists, and the majority die far short of their natural life expectancy.
Olivia, who calls marine parks her “biggest ick”, pleads: “Stop selling tickets to attractions that use orcas and other dolphins for entertainment.”
Jet2holidays is one of the last remaining travel providers to profit from orca abuse, as most leading companies, including Expedia, Thomas Cook, British Airways Holidays, Virgin Atlantic Holidays, and Club Med, have long since ended the promotion of dolphin prisons.
Bowen and Hassan join over 45,000 PETA supporters, including fellow Love Island star Faye Winter and singer Morrissey, who have urged Jet2holidays to drop marine parks from its itineraries. PETA US previously bought shares in the company in order to put pressure on decision-makers in the boardroom, and last month, a PETA US representative spoke at Jet2’s annual meeting, calling on the company to cut ties with facilities that keep orcas and other dolphins in watery prisons.
PETA opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETA.org.uk or follow the group on Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), TikTok, or Instagram.
Contact:
Jennifer White +44 (0) 20 7837 6327; [email protected]
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