Sharon Osbourne Sends a Christmas Gift to Travel Giant TUI: a Sack of Coal

For Immediate Release:

19 December 2018

Contact:

Jennifer White +44 020 7837 6327, ext 222; [email protected]

SHARON OSBOURNE SENDS A CHRISTMAS GIFT TO TRAVEL GIANT TUI: A SACK OF COAL

Outspoken British Icon Joins PETA’s Campaign Against SeaWorld

London – It takes a lot to make it onto Sharon Osbourne‘s “naughty” list – but TUI takes the top spot this Christmas for promoting cruelty to orcas. She sent a sack of coal to the travel provider’s CEO, Friedrich Joussen, along with   note explaining why the pile of sooty rocks will be making its way to the company’s head office.

The photo is also available here.

“The orcas in SeaWorld’s concrete prisons won’t have a Merry Christmas,” writes Osbourne. “Instead, they’ll be forced to swim around in endless circles, as they are every single day. That’s why I’m sending you a sack of coal this festive season and am joining my friends at PETA in urging families to keep TUI out of their travel plans and on their ‘naughty’ lists until you join the likes of Thomas Cook and Responsible Travel in cutting ties with this horrid abusement park.”

While orcas in the wild form complex relationships, work cooperatively to find food, and traverse up to 225 kilometres of ocean every day, those at SeaWorld are housed in incompatible groups in tiny tanks and have even been given the drug diazepam to manage stress-induced aggressive behaviour. Forty-one orcas and numerous other animals have died on SeaWorld’s watch – most far short of their natural life expectancies.

Since the launch of the campaign last month, PETA – whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to use for entertainment” – notes that orcas are inherently unsuited to captivity. So far, over 35,000  people have written to TUI urging it to stop promoting SeaWorld. Earlier this year, following pressure from both PETA and Osbourne, travel giant Thomas Cook announced that it would stop selling tickets to all parks that confine orcas in the name of entertainment.

For more information, please visit PETA.org.uk.

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