Photos: PETA Parades Urgent Message at Platinum Jubilee – Spare the Bears!
Photos: PETA Parades Urgent Message at Platinum Jubilee – Spare the Bears!
London – Wearing Union Jack attire and armed with an eye-catching banner proclaiming, “God Save the Queen (and the Bears)”, PETA supporters descended on the annual Trooping the Colour Parade – which includes the display of bearskin caps – to call on the Ministry of Defence (MoD) to honour Queen Elizabeth II by following her lead and going fur-free.
Images are also available here.
The action is the latest in PETA’s push for the MoD to bring faux bear fur caps – expertly designed by luxury faux furrier ECOPEL – into service.
“Her Majesty the Queen – whom the regiment is charged with protecting – no longer buys fur, and the MoD must ensure her Guards follow suit,” says PETA Senior Campaigns Manager Kate Werner. “Compassion always takes the crown, and it’s time to replace the bearskin caps with modern, humane faux fur.”
A recent report from a fabric technologist confirmed that the ECOPEL faux bear fur performed equally well to or outdid bearskin in all five areas set out by the MoD. Now, a petition in support of PETA’s campaign has hit the threshold for triggering a debate in Parliament, while a Populus opinion poll shows that 75% of the British public consider the Queen’s Guard’s bearskin caps a “bad use of Government funds”.
The MoD claims that bears are killed as part of Canadian government culls, but PETA has found no evidence that any culls of this sort exist in any province or territory of Canada. Hunters obtain permits to bait and kill bears, whose fur is then sold to auction houses. 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. It takes the skin of at least one bear to make a single cap – so the 1,400 Queen’s Guard soldiers present at Thursday’s parade represent the deaths of at least 1,400 bears.
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.
Contact:
Jennifer White +44 (0) 20 7837 6327; [email protected]
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