PETA Protesters Crash ‘Crisis’ Travel Conference  

PETA Protesters Crash ‘Crisis’ Travel Conference  

Group Pushes ABTA to Enact Policy Against Abusement Parks

London – Today, as ABTA hosted its Crisis Management in Travel Conference, attendees faced a tidal wave of commotion outside the building. PETA supporters with signs reading “Stop Supporting Orca Abuse” and “ABTA: Cetacean Captivity Is a Crisis!” demanded that the travel association amend its policy regarding captive cetaceans. PETA is calling on ABTA to add visits to facilities that exploit whales and dolphins for entertainment to its list of unacceptable and discouraged practices.

Travel giants Tripadvisor, Virgin Holidays, and British Airways Holidays refuse to promote facilities that imprison orcas, yet ABTA lags behind. Its inaction allows ABTA members such as TUI to continue to profit from animals’ suffering by selling tickets to venues that confine these sensitive, intelligent animals to cramped concrete tanks.

More images can be found here.

“Confining orcas to cramped tanks is a crisis that urgently needs to be resolved,” says PETA Senior Campaigns Manager Kate Werner. “It’s high time for ABTA to stop dragging its heels and join the majority of the travel industry by taking a stand against cetacean captivity.”

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

Contact:

Jennifer White +44 (0) 20 7837 6327; [email protected]

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